


proverbs of hell and wildflowers

by realfakedoors



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura (Voltron) is Psyche, Alternate Universe - Eros and Psyche (Hellenistic Religion & Lore) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Developing Relationship, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Drama, Gay Keith (Voltron), I Don't Even Know, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Hellenistic Religion & Lore), Keith (Voltron) as Hades, Lance (Voltron) as Persephone, Language of Flowers, Lotor (Voltron) is Eros, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Mythology References, Overprotective, Romantic Fluff, Secret Relationship, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2019-11-07 04:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17953502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realfakedoors/pseuds/realfakedoors
Summary: I begin to sing of Demeter, the holy goddess with the beautiful hair.And her daughter [Persephone] too. The one with the delicate ankles, whom Hadêsseized.--Lance, the god of the springtime, of botanical life and of flowers, spends much of his immortal life alone. He has friends, certainly, like the god of the sun, Hunk, or the goddess of the wilderness, Pidge, but even then, he only sees them on occasion.And in reality, his mother is justworried, about his safety, about something corrupting her sweet, innocent boy.Then, of course, he meets the god of the underworld, Keith, who drains the life out of almost anything he touches. Plus, he tortures lost souls or something, right?So, like any good son, Lance definitelydoesn'tdevelop feelings and proceed to engage in a secret relationship with the god of the underworld.Nope. Definitelynotsomething Lance would do.Meanwhile, Lotor, son of Honerva and the Chaotic entity, Zarkon, has been sent to punish a beautiful mortal princess, and, whoops, he falls in love with the mortal woman instead.(AKA, Persephone x Hades Klance AU with some background Lotura. T for swearing and dark themes.)





	1. Nerium oleander

**Author's Note:**

> *throws this down on the table*
> 
>  **SO BASICALLY,** I've taken the character's and plots of these two Greek stories, stripped 'em to the bare bones, threaded them together into a single plot, and sprinkled the final product with voltron!! this will draw largely from the existing texts and I'll try to do each story justice, with Lance and Keith's pairing obviously taking the forefront. 
> 
> WHICH MEANS, while this story is BASED off the original mythology, it is not bound to either story. for example, I don't want Shiro (Zeus) to be Lance's Dad. That's just weird in this context. But, I do keep it consistent that Zeus and Hades (Shiro and Keith) are brothers. so... we're sort of fusing the logic of the show and imposing it onto these characters, yeah?
> 
> there's some things I need to clarify before moving forward, because Greek gods can make things hella confusing. I'll try to cover my bases for everyone who is introduced, but don't hesitate to call me out if something is confusing.
> 
> Melenor - AKA, "Queen Melenor," AKA, Allura's mom in canon - is Demeter in this story. That is to say, she's Lance's mom. There's really nothing to read into that besides that I didn't want to invent an OC for such an important role, and Melenor seldom gets any personality so... now she has one! (as a result, Alfor/Melenor isn't a thing)
> 
> Allura - being cast as Psyche, she begins the story as a mortal. If you're familiar with the story of Psyche and Eros, then you'll know where I'm going with this.
> 
> Shiro/Adam - they're Zeus and Hera, except, Shiro doesn't cheat on Adam with like 50 million people and Adam isn't a jerk to everyone as a result of said cheating.
> 
>  
> 
> oh and a final thought -- the name is derived from one of William Blake's poems from _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ , titled Proverbs of Hell.

I begin to sing not of Melenor, the goddess with the beautiful hair, but of her son with the delicate ankles, Lance.

Like his mother, goddess of grain and bounty, Lance had a complexion warmed by sienna starlight, and a breeze of seasonable air swept through the meadow in which he sat now, resting, tousling his already unkempt, umber tresses. The grass had been sunkissed to a comfortable warmth, providing a soft bed for him to relax upon. He’d been resting flat on his stomach, but rolled over onto his back to turn his gaze upwards towards the heavens, towards _home._

If he could fall in love with a day, this might be it. Skies endless blues, great cumulus creations of Shiro and Adam’s image too gaussian to blot out the sun, but present enough to provide a speckling of white over the zenith. The day had an unbearable, profound sort of potential to it — so much could be accomplished in one of these human days. Taking in a deep breath, Lance smiled, felt his chest swell and fill with the taste of flora and fauna in the wide open green, dirt and pollen and nature in its purest state, all mixed together with the soothing, sun-warmed midday air, honeyed and cozy like a cup of tea.

It was heedlessly, unabashedly beautiful -- picturesque, even -- and, as the god of flowers, of the god of springtime and of growth, beneath and around him, all the surrounding landscape was lovely for his company.

It could be the last time he saw the sky like this for a long time. He tried to commit the scene to memory, even if he was, like, _really_ bored.

Like, fucking _out of his mind_ bored. It was awful, because he felt guilty -- surely he should soak up every second of his time here, admire the sunshine and the breeze for how beautiful it was, but he’d been at that for hours now.

It had been down almost _seven_ human days, and Lance was badly missing Hunk and Pidge, trapped as he was by the will of his mother in the mortal realm. There was some sort of drawn out affair going on, a delegation or something, involving several higher-order beings from the Underworld, so it was without surprise that she had decided to hide him away to be amongst the mortals for a few days.

Even the pantheon wasn’t deemed safe in her opinion -- she wanted him to stay on a separate plane for the entirety of their visit.

That said, Lance would be the first to admit that there were plenty of worse ways to spend his time. He quite liked Earth; he enjoyed blending in beside the humans, to flirt with their pretty women, with their soft curves and demure smiles, or to catch the eye of their broad-shouldered men, with their strong hands and lustful gazes. But, even so, such base pursuits became tiresome and tedious.

He always had to be so _careful_ around mortals.

Melenor had nearly cast out a plague upon the harvest on the last city he’d lingered in too long, after getting _barely_ involved with a mortal there. And, granted, he’d seen more than his fair share of gods and goddess get caught up in romances with those who resided on Earth, and they seldom ever ended happily, so it’s not like Lance didn’t _understand_ his mother’s concerns… she, just, took it a bit _far_ , in his not-so-humble opinion. Once, he had literally taken a girl for a _walk_ , and his mother had explained to him that the resulting famine that struck that human village afterwards had just been a ‘coincidence’.

 

The first leg of his time away had gone over quickly, when he had enough to do as ways of distraction. He’d stopped into Athens during a busy day at market, just to watch the people bustle and chatter, and he’d even gotten wind of some tempestuous rumors -- evidently, there was a mortal woman who was so lovely that she had men and women favoring her even over the goddess of beauty herself, Honerva. Lance was always curious about these occasions that drew comparisons between the mortal and immortal, so he’d traveled to the kingdom to see the human and judge for himself. She was a princess, apparently, the youngest of three, and she _was_ beautiful… but, she also looked _a lot_ like his mother. Uncomfortably so, in fact, so while Lance was willing to acknowledge the fact that she was indeed an image of beauty, that was the extent of his interest in the girl. It was like trying to picture if his _Mom_ was attractive and just -- _ew_ , no.

That whole excursion had taken him about three human sun cycles, and he knew he was already pushing his luck in spending so much time in the cities. Whether it was just to observe and socialize or to attend some festival or another, Lance was forbidden from intermingling with mortals for too long a time or else Melenor would scale back his already limited freedoms, so he hadn’t even bothered to risk anymore metropolitan exploration.

After another day or so spent admiring the sea, Lance had elected to spend the remaining three or so days doing… well, _this._ Wandering the valleys and hilltops of various planes of land, sometimes resting, other times walking, tumbling, laying down, climbing trees or exploring burrows. Now, he’d been literally reduced to counting the blades of grass, one-by-one, or tracing scripture or sculpture in the clouds. There wasn’t anything left to do, and he hadn’t a clue how much longer he was supposed to be here.

 _Go to Earth_ , Mother said. It’ll be _good_ for him.

How can a place be ‘good for him’ when he wasn’t even allowed to _do_ anything there?

“Ugh,” he groaned, letting out a low sigh in an attempt to coax his muscles into relaxing. His shoulders did manage to unwind, if only marginally, and he allowed his eyes to slip closed.

He tried not place blame on Melenor, for her intentions were only with the interest of keeping him safe. She was his _mother_ , and to harbor bitterness towards her made his heart feel dense, burdened by an uncomfortable, unwanted weight.

He yawned, blinking his eyes closed in the comfort of the sunshine; the warmth wasn’t exactly like being with Hunk, just an impression of the real thing, but Lance enjoyed it anyway.

Thinking about his mother sometimes just made him exhausted.

She was a... _bit_ protective.

Melenor’s maternal whims did not have anything to do with whether or not one was mortal or immortal. There were lesser deities who would float in now and then for a specific reason, and Lance could hardly tell one from another -- at the _mention_ of someone coming around the Overworld, his mother would invariably tuck him away somewhere, whether it be in clouds or gardens or mountains or, for longer occasions, leave him alone on the surface world. While he wasn’t supposed to interact with humans for too long, they were, for the most part, harmless.

_Stay home, here, safe, but be ready to leave in case of visitors; go to the surface, but don’t interact with the mortals if you can help it; don’t wander, for you could get lost; don’t go anywhere with someone you don’t know._

Love freely, but do so distantly; bring things to bloom, but never to blossom.

It amounted to Lance spending a lot of time like this -- that is, _alone_. He did not mind his own company, or that of the grass that thrived in the surrounding meadow, or the tickle of a breeze over his robes, but how long could that last, really, before he wanted for a little more? Avarice wasn’t his domain, though.

Lance had just started to doze off, trying to drink in the last of the bittersweet nectar that was his freedom in this realm, when the sound of something diaphanous, like a low ringing bell that continued to chime, began to buzz over the pastoral scene. Bleary eyed, Lance sat up in search of the noises’ source. At first, he mistook it for the slight ripple over the air that accompanied a rift between the Overworld and the mortal realm, and a resulting tremor of excitement fluttered in his veins as he wondered who had come down for him. Would it be his mother, finally telling him that the “threat had passed” and he was fine to return home? Or maybe, had Hunk or Pidge come down to help him to pass the time? Or perhaps Shiro himself was coming down, as he had always loved humans and their funny customs, much to Adam’s frequent chagrin.

Out, across the stretch of the meadow that had become his sanctuary and his prison, Lance watched a rift start to form in midair, focusing on the source of light as it began to coalesce into a stable divide between realms, and he considered getting up and racing across the open field to greet whoever might appear, but the thought had scarcely occurred to him before his anticipatory smile faded.

The colors were all wrong.

The shimmery blues or brilliant golds that Lance loved so dearly of the Overworld were absent, replaced instead by this miasma of inky black and splotches of sickly purple.

After a moment, the rift stabilized and with a sudden stab of anxiety that was like a hot knife pressed right into his abdomen, he watched as a boot stepped through the black, effervescent distortion, finding solid purchase on the grass below, then another, and the accompanying body and head and -- _that rift is from the Underworld holy shit holy shit oh my god fuck I’m so fucked --_

What _was_ that? Some sort of… of _daemon_? Something Lotor had fashioned just to fuck with him?

Lance’s thudding heart, blessed be the immortal thing, was working overtime, and the back of his neck pricked in something that was neither fear nor curiosity, but some providence between the two. It was unnerving, and a deeply embedded instinct that warned _danger_ was screaming at him in protest of his own inertia. This being was clearly dangerous, _powerful_ , and sure, perhaps he was just as immortal as Lance, but this person was of an entire different caliber of power.

They’d emerged from the rift at an angle, so Lance could only see their profile -- he was quite sure they hadn’t even noticed him laying down in the grass a few dozen paces away.

The figure was like some sort of charcoal rendering, totally out of place in the freeing midday sunshine, a backdrop of bright skies and lush fields expanding out around them. Everything about the being was either black or white -- their hair, dark, messy as it framed their jaw and extended past their shoulders; their skin, ashen, complemented by great twin curves of black horns that protruded from their hairline. Their shoulders were broad, and tendrils of icher clung to him like a second skin from stepping out of the rift, like a sable shroud that fluttered around his torso.

Whatever it was -- Lance was content on labeling it a daemon, at least for now -- it began to look around almost… what, skeptically? That was close, their gaze shrewd as they craned their neck to examine their feet, then their own hands before finally squinting skyward. The unfamiliar, nefarious being released a big breath of air, and the disruption in space-time behind them began to seal shut.

In his imagination, Lance pictured Mother, already frantic and dragging him away by the wrist, but he didn’t move, found he didn’t really _want_ to move.

What _was_ it? Why was it here? Was it here for him -- surely it couldn’t a coincidence that they popped out here, of all places? Perplexed and intrigued, Lance found himself too transfixed on observing the mysterious presence to do much but watch. He’d had nothing to do for _days_ , and he knew better than to flirt with danger like this -- he _really did_ \-- but it was just _exciting_ that something was _finally_ happening -- could you really blame him for staying put?

Sure, this daemon-thing _could_ probably whirl around and murder him on the spot, but he’d be lying if he didn’t find that sort of… thrilling? It certainly explained the rush of adrenaline pumping in his veins, eagerly awaiting the other to do something, to turn and perhaps notice him. What would they do? Should Lance say something? Would they be violent if he called out?

And, gods above, why did that idea serve to _entice_ him? Lance’s throat felt dry, unwilling or otherwise unprepared to deal with _that_ train of thought at the moment.

Lance’s question was answered not a few seconds later, and let it be said that it was with no small amount of self-control that he kept from gasping audibly in surprise because the daemon threw their head back and started fucking _screaming_ at the top of their lungs.

**_“SHIRO, WHAT THE FUCK?”_ **

And as the curse was lost on the breeze, the interloper’s voice emptying out over the wide open field, the dark figure kept their head turned up to glare at the clouds, like they’d somehow personally offended him.

It took exactly three seconds of silence for Lance to lose his composure, and any latent anxiety that had rattled his nerves had been banished as he fell flat back into the grass, positively _shaking_ with the force of his laughter. He gripped his sides and giggled like he’d never experienced humor before, while all around him, the grass had begun to turn to flowers, little red hycthincia sprigs and bright white camilla blossoms began rising up in patches, spreading outwards with him at their center. It may have been because he had been so heedlessly pent up for the past few days, or because the guy's dark mystique had been utterly ruined by the latter’s _cursing at the sky_ like a lunatic, but, whatever the case, Lance could barely keep from outright _cackling_.

Oh, and the _chagrin_ of the daemon; it only made the whole thing funnier. His annoyance was clear as sunshine on a cloudless day, visible even in the jarring image that was his eyes, pitched entirely black from sclera to pupil like a depthless fountain of ink.

It wasn’t surprising when he’d started to march towards Lance in response to his laughter, looking angrier than Alfor on a _bad_ day, and Lance wasn’t stupid. He knew, could _feel_ it in the core of his being, that he should be afraid, could feel his muscles tense with the deep desire to get the hell out of there and run until he wasn’t even in Greece anymore, but the whole abrupt, cataclysmic _hilarity_ of the situation had rendered him little more than a giggly mess.

Brushing the near-tears from his eyes, Lance peeked through his lashes, breath catching in the chasm of his lungs when he realized the daemon was now right in front of him. He’d moved silently, quickly, and the change in proximity was alarming.

He maintained eye contact, though, if only because Lance was damn stubborn. Alfor’s glares were sharper than broken glass, and if Lance had learned not to wilt beneath the intense gaze of the god of _war_ , then he sure as hell wasn’t about to submit to some random daemon who butted in on his alone time.

Lance could not have told you with confidence how long they stayed like that, glaring at each other, how long they were stuck in that silence that fell more assuredly than the sunset sinking over the western horizon. He was immobilized by his own terror and thrilled by his bizarre curiosity, and even more confused by the reality of the discord of the two.

In the surrounding grass, unconsciously, bright purple baubles of aconite had begun to bloom, mixed with the warm, familiar undertones of red oleander petals. A small webbing of ivy with white sprigs traced up his toes and feet, tickling and taunting him with the urge to laugh in spite of finding himself in the midst of such an utterly terrifying situation.

Eventually -- it could have been minutes or days, he really wasn’t sure -- the daemon broke the silence. Their voice was coarser than gravel and harsher than hail.

“Where is Shiro?”

They were no longer screaming, which was both reassuring but also noticeably less funny, and the change in tone made the remainder of Lance’s amusement vanish. “And what are you? Some kind of nymph?”

“A _nymph_?” He leaned forward in the grass, quirking a brow with something between amused and annoyed by the insinuation. “Uh, no. I may be pretty, but I’m not useless, thanks. As for Shiro, seeing as you seem to _know_ Shiro, you probably know that he’s exactly where he always is.”

Lance raised a hand over his head flippantly, gesturing the skies, and the stranger seemed to get the message. Their eyes followed Lance’s hand up, and down again, until Lance rested his palms back into the grass behind him to support his weight. At that point, his gaze returned to Lance’s face.

Perhaps, he considered, these beings from the Underworld truly were as wicked as the rumors suggested, because this one had been here for not yet two minutes and Lance was already feeling rather… _corruptible_. That was the only explanation for why he would ever notice the strong lines of his torso, or the slight sculpt and curve of his shoulders and arm muscles.

Shit, was he really _that_ impressionable? Maybe it was for good reason Mother kept him under such constant surveillance.

No, no. _No._ This was -- it was just some silly, perverse interest, only because this was something he had never seen before. That was _all_. It completely accounted for why his mouth was so dry and stomach twisted into at least three different knots.

What about the fever pitch of his pulse beneath his veins? Oh, well, that -- _that_ was just, er, he was just… he wasn’t _nervous_ , per say, just a little, well, _unsure_. After all, Mother would be furious if she found out that he had been within a stone’s throw of something or someone from the Underworld, and he’d never actually _seen_ a daemon up close, so… so it was, just, _normal_ to be a little on edge, right?

Yeah. Definitely.

“So…” Lance coughed once the silence had stretched on to the point of awkwardness, and he felt a grin tug at the corner of his lips with the daemon’s eyes flashed to his face. It was difficult to explain, looking into all black depths, but Lance had a sense of where he was looking without need of watching his pupils.  “Do you usually scream when you leave the Underworld? Or was that a one-time thing?”

“No, I -- I was trying to get to Shiro. The Overworld, I mean. I’m supposed to meet with Shiro.”

Head tilted to one side, Lance crooked a small smile. “Yeah, I gathered that much from the way you yelled ‘what the fuck’ earlier. Maybe Shiro had to close travel between the realms, or, I dunno, your portal coordinates were off or something.”

They raised an eyebrow. “ _Portal coordinates_?”

“Hey,” Lance narrowed his gaze. “I was just throwing out ideas, I’m not pretending to be an expert.”

“Clearly.” Their statement was punctuated by an annoying smirk, and Lance pursed his lips skeptically.

“Are you always this much of an asshole to people you don’t know?” he queried.

The other’s smirk and mildly open body language disappeared. The guy scowled at him instead, black tendrils coiling off his hands, and the ground beneath him turned to jagged obsidian. “Do _you_ always sneak up on strangers and laugh at them when their guard is down?”

His jaw dropped. “ _Sneak up on…?_! _You_ just walked through to the mortal realm, _I’ve_ been sitting here for hours. It’s your fault for not looking around before you started screaming!”

The guy -- _seriously?!_ \-- just _rolled his eyes?_ At _Lance_? It didn’t even matter that he couldn’t even tell the direction the daemon was looking, and it was _still_ painfully apparent what he’d just done, and the underlying disrespect in the gesture had pushed him over the precipice of annoyed to angry.

“Who even _are_ you, anyway? What do you want with Shiro?”

The daemon wrinkled his nose, probably ready to throw back some snarky remark, but his words were cut off abruptly with a sudden gasp. Both their eyes darted down, and Lance clapped a hand over his own mouth -- _shit_ , he’d gotten more upset than he meant to, and prickly tendrils of ivy vines had begun snaking around the daemon’s boot, innocuous with their white sprigs of petals but deceptively violent, hiding thorns beneath their leaves.

 _Such an amateur thing to do_ , he scolded himself. Lance was better than that, and he knew it, so he sprang forward and waved his hand, forcing the ivy to release their captive. He came just short of brushing his fingers against his leg, and it was only then, closer than he’d been before, that he realized that there was some sort of beautiful, bizarre happenings at their feet.

Upon the grass the otherworldly presence had walked, Lance could see a graying, wilting path of corruption in his wake; the grass turned dry, withering first to the color of wheat, then to a sickly shade of gray. At the edge of his own feet, where the flowers had spread outward when he’d been overwhelmed by the earlier laughter, the flora stood vigilant, almost stubbornly, toe-to-toe with the daemon’s boots.

“Oh...” Lance breathed, his anger slipping away with a sudden rush of silent admiration and surprise; it was as if someone had painted brushstrokes of grayscale into the scenery, leaving behind a lush, monochromatic meadow that fluttered in the midday breeze, the scenic image calm in an empty, beautiful sort of way.

To his surprise, the daemon slowly began to lower himself, settling down to one knee and looking around him at the flowers. Tentatively, he extended a hand towards a nearby bunch of periwinkle and ran his fingers over the exterior petals.

Lance heard the daemon’s breath catch.

“Are... _you_ doing this?” The dark-haired stranger asked, his voice surprisingly soft.

The sudden change in attitude had Lance second-guessing himself. Shyly, he nodded, watching as the daemon took one of the tiny buds between two fingers. It seemed like he was prepared to pluck it from the earth, fingers hovering about halfway down the stem, but he thought better of it and drew his hand back.

“Sorry, um, about the vines.” He averted his gaze, embarrassed as little flush of red darkened his cheeks, coloring them with the richness of cherry blossoms. ”I didn’t mean to get angry. I usually have better control than that.”

“Control?” The other repeated, mostly to themselves, before looking up. “So you’re… you’re _not_ a nymph.”

Now it was Lance’s turn to roll his eyes, but he tacted on a well-meaning smirk to show that he wasn’t actually annoyed. “I said that already, didn’t I?”

There was a pause for several seconds, and the daemon licked his lips. “May I sit with you?”

“You’re basically already doing that,” retorted the efflorescent god teasingly, but when the dark presence continued to kneel, still as a stone statue, he sighed and gave a purposeful shrug. “Yes, of course. Sit, if you want. But Shiro really _isn’t_ here. I don’t know why you can’t get to the Overworld; I’m stuck here, too.”

With deliberate slowness, the other began to settle onto the earth, one leg crossed and the other extended bent out and away from them. They kept their gaze fixed down, carding his hands through the cluster of vibrant periwinkle with feather-light touches, fingers barely stirring the tranquility of the silken petals.

“These are… beautiful,” the daemon uttered after a long pause, still fixated as he was with the periwinkle. The cool spill of blue petals proudly maintained their pop of color, stubborn even with the daemon’s draining aura, and Lance glowed in response to the compliment. (That is, he literally started to glow -- his eye scales, a _lovely,_ inherited, gift from his mother, began to flutter and pulse with shades of aquamarine and morning frost.)

“Thanks, although to be honest, these just sort of pop up when I’m nerv -- when I’ve _never_ been around someone before… yeah. Mm. Uhh.” Clambering for a different subject, he landed on the spectacularly uncreative topic of his birthright, surrounding him like a big blaring sign that read ‘ _I have nothing else to talk about’_.

“Do you, uhh, have a favorite? I could make something way better if I was trying.”

”A favorite… color?” The other quizzed, fixing a scowl in Lance’s direction before continuing to card his fingers mindlessly over the patch of fresh blooms.

“No,” Lance huffed. “Like, a favorite _flower_. I make them, I figured that was obvious.”

“Oh.” For just a flicker of a second, they stilled, before resuming the absent-minded movements of his hand and fingers. “No. We don’t have anything like this in the Underworld.”

Ah. Well, that explained how he was so easily impressed with Lance’s utterly underwhelming, instinctual, _I’m-a-nice-guy-please-don’t-kill-me,_ seat of his pants excuse of a meadow that was popping up around them. Stupid emotions.

“Why do you ask?” The other questioned, suspicious. “You still haven’t told me what you are. Were you banished? Cursed?”

Scoffing, Lance drew his legs up to his chest, crossing his feet as his ankles and holding his knees in place. “What is _with_ your paranoia? You gotta work on that, _really_ doesn’t make for a great first impression. But if it’ll help you to calm down, my mother sent me down here because there’s a whole bunch of -- well, _your lot,_ I guess, all up there right now. I assume that’s why you were trying to get to Shiro in the first place, right?”

Judging by their expression, doubtful if not outright contemptuous, Lance figured he was about to get murdered. Brutally, probably, because this _was_ a creature of the Underworld.

After a too long pause, the daemon did _not_ murder him, instead responding to Lance’s question with an uncomfort lilt to their tone.

“I…well, _yes._ So then your mother is… a goddess?”

“Melenor,” he hummed. “And I’m Lance. Those who inhabit _this_ realm have decided to call me _Persephone_ , so you might know me by that name, but I really prefer Lance. Like how they’ve all got names for whoever, _Zeus_ and Shiro, _Ares_ and Alfor, you know. Blah blah.”

“Oh!” The daemon’s expression flickered with something close to recognition. “Yes, okay. Shiro’s definitely mentioned you before. I’ve… met Melenor… I had been told she had a daughter --”

“ _Son_ ,” Lance corrected. “That’s part of the humans’ mythos, but. Yeah. I’m a dude.”

The daemon frowned. “Sorry. I knew she had… _you_ , but I always wondered if it was like, well, _not true_? No offense or anything. I’ve just… _been around for awhile_ and I’ve never met you?”

“Yeah, well, Mother doesn’t usually let me away from the pantheon… almost ever. This is an exception since there’s visitors, the mortal plane is… safer.” His attention flicked down to the demon’s blackened claws, a bit larger than an anatomically proportional human and decidedly deadly. “Usually. If you’ve met my mother and might cross-paths with her again, I’d appreciate you not tell her that we spoke. I could get in a lot of trouble. I’m… not supposed to really speak to anyone. Especially someone from the Underworld. I’ve never met a daemon before.”

Lance had tried for a smile through his explanation, but the gesture sat uncomfortable on his lips. His head had turned in the direction he knew was Thebes, though he was much too far into the fields for it to be visible.

“Sorry, I was rambling…That’s enough about me.”

Shaking his head, Lance turned back to look at the daemon, still preoccupied by pops of color surrounding their otherwise colorless world.

There was about a meters distance between where they each rested, and, like some sort of dividing line, not unlike a warning, the grass was cleaved evenly between their respective sides.

On his own side, the world thrived. Lush and alive and overflowing with flowers in response to his muddled emotions, nerves and excitement and interest and doubt; brambles of thorns began to rise in the stems of cream-colored quince and pastel pink roses, intertwining with narcissus and poppies and lavender. At this rate, if Lance didn’t get a grip, the place would make itself into a proper, utterly unkempt field of wildflowers.

On the other’s side, the world had been cast beneath a great shade, the essence of everything _muted._ Not gone, mind you, just… subdued. The grass was still there, just motionless and still; the sun continued to light up the world, but it was dimmer, desaturated in a sort of gradient with the daemon at its darkened center.

When it appeared the other didn’t pick up on his invitation to speak, Lance proded, “So...?”

“So, what?” they asked, and he sighed meaningfully.

“ _So_ ,” Lance reiterated. “After I told you all of that, do I at least get to know your name?”

The daemon’s head snapped up, black icher of his eyes boring into Lance’s face, and he felt his heart rate pick up with that same sense as before -- _danger_ , it whispered. Lance _knew_ that, whatever this daedric entity’s intention, it could easily and completely destroy him -- forget being immortal, all bets were off when it came to beings from the Underworld. All it would take is but a slight persuasion of that calculated, cold gaze and a little bit of will to exercise his intent -- that sort of fearsome capacity for destruction, that scared Lance more than he would care to admit.

And yet, they hadn’t tried to kill him.

They hadn’t made any attempt to maim him or hurt him in anyway. They were a little rude and had the personality of an irritable deciduous tree, sure, but plenty of humans and plenty _more_ gods were just as short-fused. This daemon was just… well, besides their permanent scowl, they were not especially cruel, and they certainly did not seem interested in _hurting_ Lance.

“Keith.”

“Keith?” Lance blinked twice, focusing on his face. He was still gazing at the periwinkle flower, defiantly blue as it stood smartly between pointer finger and thumb. “As in…”

The daemon’s weight shifted slightly, and it was with a deep pang of sadness that Lance watched some of the soft grays around him turn darker, like someone had rubbed soot into the edges of a grayscale canvas.

“Hades, yeah. God of the Underworld. I’m... Shiro’s brother.”

Oh.

_Huh._

Lance tilted his head to the side, a little too shocked to mind his manners or to think of something witty to say. He simply stared at the daemon -- well, no, they weren’t a daemon. He had to correct his preconceived assumptions.

They too were a god.

In retrospect, it made some amount of sense. The rift between worlds -- only Shiro could open those so far as Lance knew, so it wasn’t a reach to assume that his brother would be able to do the same on the other side; in spite of the frequent descriptions of disfiguration or monstrosities when it came to daemons, his anatomical appearance was more aligned with the forms the other gods would choose.

They started to pull themselves to their feet. “Anyways, I’ll go. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“W-Well, wait.” Lance almost reached out his hands to stop him, but instead just held them in front of his chest in apology. “You, uh, you don’t _have_ to go if you don’t want? Sorry, I guess I was just surprised… you’re, like, _Hades_.”

“I really prefer Keith,” he replied dryly.

“Keith, then. Sorry. Wow, my Mom will… uhhhh, right. If you go back up there, or see her anytime soon, or… ever... _please_ don’t tell my mother that we spoke.”

Now Hades -- _Keith,_ he made a point to correct himself not Hades -- _Keith_ appeared to the be the one confused, relaxing a bit as he sat back down. “She really doesn’t let you meet anyone outside of the Overworld? I mean, I know I’m probably… _not_ everyone’s favorite, but you really haven’t met _anyone_ from the Underworld before?”

“Are you kidding?” Lance scoffed, and he leaned back on his hands, head pointed up to the sky. “She doesn’t even let me meet people in the Overworld besides those on Mount Altea. Other deities, visitors… It’s not safe.”

Keith chewed his lip. “If she believes you’re not safe in the Overworld, why does she think you would be safer down here?”

“Humans are harmless,” Lance said with a shrug.

A frown sat stone-heavy on the other’s lips, taking a moment before responding.

“Not every human is as humane as you would think.”

“I imagine that’s true,” Lance answered, almost absently. “I’ve only ever spent long enough around them to learn their names or a custom or two. I don’t want to linger, else they’ll suffer for it.”

Their question was implied when the other god said, “Melenor…?”

“She gets so worried, she makes herself sick. And when she’s sick...”

 “...The Earth gets sick.”

Smirking, Lance leaned his head over to one-side, stretching out his neck and shoulders. “Yes, exactly. But it’s plenty healthy right now… as long as I don’t get caught.”

“I won’t tell her,” the chthonic god vowed, and for absolutely no good reason, Lance believed him.

Lance smiled and nodded his thanks, and Keith looked away, his own expression changing from sincere to intense when his attention settled to the bed of flowers around them, still mindlessly brushing petals with his fingertips. His hand stilled.

Suddenly focused, the chthonic god pursed his lips. “I wonder… if I…”

With the faintest _snap_ , he plucked the flower from the soil, blinking down at it expectantly.

Nothing happened, and the dark-haired god seemed genuinely _mystified_. “These flowers you make… they don’t die?”

“Well, no. They will eventually.” Unable to resist, Lance added teasingly, “I’d expect you to be the expert on that, Mr. God-King-Ruler of the Underworld. Aren’t you supposed to like, torture lost souls or something?”

At that, Keith let out a loud, audible laugh, and the sound seemed to fit in the open air as seamlessly as a skeleton key might fit into any proffered lock.

“No, geez, is _that_ what they say about me?” Some of the humor drained from his smile, voice turning wistful. “Dying is just as much a part of being mortal as living… I’m just in charge of overseeing that half of the journey.”

Eyes wide, Lance crossed his legs and leaned forward. “That doesn’t sound so bad when you put it like that. How’d you get such a… well...”

“Bad image?” Keith suggested, and Lance sheepishly nodded.

“It’s hard to know.” The darkness of his eyes narrowed, black slits examining the stem of the oleander petal as he gently twisted between his fingers. “Shiro guesses it’s just because people are afraid. Death is scary to think about for most people; no one knows where they’ll end up once they die. I don’t even know until they come to the Underworld, where they’ll be judged. If someone does something terrible while living, they have to pay it back eventually. Whether they’ll go to Styx or Elysium or… well, some souls _do_ end up being punished. Sometimes forever. Not because I want to, but because it’s just about balance, you know?”

They’d scarcely said the last words before stiffening, no longer playing with the flower in their grasp. “Um, sorry, that was -- I sort of -- I got carried away.”

“Don’t apologize,” Lance chuckled a bit at his own expense, how unusual it was to speak those words. This was _The_ Hades, and he was… apologizing to _Lance_? What even? “I asked. It’s interesting… I don’t know much about the Underworld. Or, you know, about anything that my Mother doesn’t approve of.”

Half-joking, he tagged on a grin, and Keith seemed relieved, if not grateful for the reassurance.

“Thanks. I can get carried away -- I just…” The subterranean god considered his next words with great care. In the end, it sounded more like he was trying to convince himself.

“I’m not a monster.”

“No,” Lance bit his lip to hide a smile. “I don’t suppose you are.”

In response, an almost gentle tug quirked up the corner of Keith’s mouth… and, well, Lance would have been lying if he didn’t think the expression looked good on him. He may be desperately in denial about finding the chthonic presence oddly charming, but he also wasn’t _blind_. Embarrassed, he looked away and chuckled, looking around at the excessive undergrowth he’d unleashed upon the unsuspecting landscape. It was utterly unrefined, haphazardly thrown together emotions and nerves spilling out around him and taking root in the grass, but there was something at least pretty about the disorder, chaotic and sincere whether he liked it or not.

It was Keith who eventually sighed, and Lance looked up to follow his gaze. He still held the oleander blossom, but it had since begun to fade, the warm splash of red softening and taking on different tones of shale and charcoal and ashen, fluttering weakly against the inexorable demands of the rippling shadow that was Keith’s presence, the life slowly yielding beneath his fingertips.

Keith released a low exhale, extending his hand between them, stopping where the ridge in the grass turned from green and lush to gray and immolant beneath his own arm.

“You should probably take this back. It... doesn’t really belong with me.” He wore a fond, if not achingly sad, smile. “It’s too pretty to ruin.”

Lance stared at his hand for a few moments, unblinking. Unconsciously, he began chewing the inside of his gums.

A breeze passed into the valley, brushing up grass and carding Lance’s hair gently with its invisible touch. Somehow, perhaps by Zephyr’s blessing, the silence that fell between them after that managed not to be uncomfortable. No, it was quiet and calm, like the descent of a feather or windswept petals, lazily enduring the gravity that pulled them under. It made what could have been terribly awkward into something strangely, intimately infinite, like they could have sat there in the wide open world for an hour, a day, a month, a year -- for all of time and for no time at all.

Their silence was, somehow, weightless.

There were rules, expectations, all manner of things that told Lance he should know better. That he should be _afraid_ , even. The division in the grass, where the gray met the green, was, in the most literal sense a line that he was not supposed to cross.

But this is _Lance_. So of course he was going to cross it.

Hesitantly, Lance extended his own hand, but instead of taking the proffered flower, Lance curled the other’s fingers back over the ruined flora, at the same time closing his own eyes.

With an intentional release of energy, he felt the lifeforce of the tiny flower begin to flutter, resonating with the frequencies of his own soul, felt it fill like a cupbearer’s goblet. He stopped only when it reached the pinnacle of what life it could hold, enough to imprint his own image upon it.

When he opened his eyes and sat back, Lance could not help but to grin in response to Keith’s stunned expression. He opened his palm, and the oleander had turned illuminate, a soft, baby blue bioluminescence rekindling the color of the petals with life anew. Where it had been pretty before, it now shone brilliantly, and Lance could feel his eye scales softly aglow in response, as if the flower called out in song and his own heart was weak but to answer.

“Keep it. I’ve got plenty.”

The other’s mouth opened, looking prepared to say something, only to snap closed again after several seconds. He ended up smiling and nodding, pulling the flower back to his chest.

“I… you didn’t have to do that.”

Lance let out a big breath before flopping back into the grass, eyes trained up to the sky yet again. “I appreciated having someone to talk to. And it was interesting to learn a little bit about where you’re from, so, thanks.”

“I didn’t really do anything,” Keith protested with a small huff, though it didn’t sound like his heart was in it.

Lance just relaxed, a natural smirk fixing itself to his lips. “You didn’t really have to. That’s the point of a gift.”

After a brief pause, Keith sounded reluctant when he said, “I… I should probably try to get to the Overworld again. For what it’s worth, the things we’re discussing are almost done. I don’t know your mother’s whole… _system_ … but hopefully you’ll be able to go home soon.”

“Hey, thanks,” Lance hummed, leaning on his elbows to get a good look at the god one more time before he was left alone again. “I’d say come visit sometime at my mother’s temple if you’re ever up there, but… If you’re ever up there, I’ll most likely be here. Sort of a bad loop, huh?”

Keith scratched his cheek, standing upright again. “Heh. Yeah… Thanks, anyways.”

“It was nice meeting you, Keith,” Lance smiled, warm and bright. “You can get your portal coordinates all turned around again and hang out with me instead anytime.”

The other laughed, and Lance’s own smile widened. “Sure. It was nice to meet you too, Lance.”

A familiar whistle of air, not unlike a blade being dramatically unsheathed from its holster, rang out suddenly and another rift began to open, that same devastatingly pitch black coalescence forming a void through which Keith moved, a final small smile and wave sent over his shoulder, and Lance returned it in kind.

And then, just as abruptly as he’d entered, the god of the underworld was gone, and Lance was alone again.

\--

 

It would be about twelve more hours, give or take, before Lance was welcomed back into the Overworld. Coran had come down to fetch him, which presented a nice opportunity for some companionable conversation; the messenger god interacted with everyone, across all realms, mortal or immortal alike, so Lance found it endlessly interesting to listen to him talk about his stories.

The problem was, however, with Coran’s fierce loyalty to honesty. If he suspected Lance had done wrong, he would not hesitate in informing Melenor.

Carefully, Lance asked him about his times spent in the chthonic realm as made the familiar ascent, queried about his interactions with the gods there. He used the week’s long delegation as an excuse for his curiosity, which the moustached man seemed to buy just fine.\

“Well, they’re a very stringent bunch. Rule abiding, for the most part, but they’ve got tempers and aren’t afraid to vocalize when they see a disagreement. I think it was especially hard on Honevera, however. You might consider calling on her sometime this week to see how she’s doing.”

“Ah.” Lance sucked his teeth, sitting back low in the chariot seat.

That made sense, if Zarkon had been there; she’d had an affair with the Chaotic deity, and Lotor was the result. The two got on well enough in the Overworld on their own, but _Zarkon_ refused to acknowledge the entity as his son. It had kept Lance from getting to know the other god for a long, long time, until Honerva had finally had it and made an angry claim against his mother to be discriminatory -- that, in keeping Lance from Lotor’s company, she was in effect insinuating that she didn’t think Lotor righteous enough to be a friend to her own son.

It was… definitely awkward for Lance. He didn’t really like Lotor, but the guy was… alright? Their interactions always felt forced and uncomfortable, probably not unrelated to the tension between their mothers.

“Shiro seemed incredibly pleased with the whole thing, though,” Coran tittered on, bringing Lance back to the present. “But then, he always seems happy whenever he spends time with his brother. The two are strangely similar, but so different at the same time... but then again, I suppose that’s appropriate isn’t it?”

“I, um, guess so. I wouldn’t really know.”

“Right, of course,” Coran twisted the end of his moustache thoughtfully. “Which reminds me, Pidge and Hunk were both anxious to see you again, but your mother requested you to her temple straight away. Perhaps check in with them if she can spare you for a bit of time?”

He crooked a smile, nodding. “Thanks, Coran. How are _you_ , by the way? Was it a good… whatever, visiting-trip-delegation-thing?”

“Oh, very well!” the man responded with a grin of his own, bouncing on his heels. “I’ve got a large set of new appointments to take care of now, so more work for me, but it was indeed productive. Good for everyone, I think.”

“That’s what Mother always says to me,” Lance murmured, speaking without thinking. “When she sends me away, I mean. That it’ll be good for everyone.”

Coran steadied his hold on the chariots reins as they entered the cloud lines surrounding Mount Altea, his voice taking on that distinctively sage quality whenever he spoke about something he deemed important.

“Well, she cares about you an awful lot my boy. I just think her biggest fear is seeing you hurt. There’s a lot of terrible things out there, many of which would jump at the chance to hurt one of our own… The realms are divided for a reason.”

Lance didn’t have a response to that, but he didn’t want to appear rude, so he agreed with a noncommittal, “Yeah.”

“Although,” the man acquiesced, his tone conspiratorial as he glanced over his shoulder to wink at the younger god. “I do think it silly that you aren’t allowed to contribute to such affairs. It’s just that, if you stayed --”

Lance, grateful for Coran’s honesty, chuckled and turned around, watching the receding world.

“Mother could get sick with worry, and humans will die. I know, Coran.”

The older man let out a low noise that, if Lance didn’t know better, sounded unusually sad for his usual spirits.

“I’m sorry, lad.”

“Don’t be,” Lance hummed. “It’s for the good of everyone.”

He crossed his arms, laying them around the back of the chariot, his skin tingling with the transition between realms. It was always obvious with the way his lungs felt fuller, his skin warmer, his vision sharper -- all of it reacting to the saturation of raw energy that soaked the clouds, steeped into the air like a slow settling mist, a spritz of citrus spray that rose off lemon rinds but instead of sour, the taste was clean and fresher than on Earth’s surface. No grit or substance whatsoever.

Lance belonged here, he knew. It felt right, and his soul unbound in the plane of the immortal. This place was the comfort of ambrosial delights, where the ethereal roamed free of mortal desires and agendas. This was his home, and he’d waited days to finally return, and yet, he looked upon the passing buildings with their sleek Altean architecture and grandiose columns with…

Coran cleared his throat, and there was a strained edge to it that immediately made Lance feel guilty. He’d been zoning out, rudely forgetting that he had company.

“Did you want to stop off by Adam’s? I know you’re always keen on borrowing from his library.”

“Oh, um.” Turning back around, Lance rubbed his palms restlessly against the edge of his seat. “No, that’s okay. I think I’ve read through everything there.”

“You’re welcome to borrow one of my books too, if you’d like,” the man offered, and Lance had to laugh at his gusto -- you could practically _hear_ him glowing with pride.

And Lance did consider the offer, seeing as it was one of the few hobby’s of which his mother approved, but ultimately declined.

“Nah, I think I’ll just work on my own stuff for awhile. Thanks, though.”

“Very well!” He sang, turning the chariot in anticipation of letting him out in front of his mother’s temple.

Beaming with such warmth that it caused his eye scales to glow, Lance couldn’t help but respond in kind with a goofy grin of his own as he waved the man goodbye.

He turned around and looked up the stoop, sighing. Melenor’s Temple was similarly grand to all the other major deities, modeled after some fusion of the pantheon built in their honor with elements of traditional Altean pews built into it. There was perhaps two dozen steps he had to climb to get to the front, and Lance did not hesitate in strolling through the columns and into the foyer.

As expected, his mother was waiting for him, a glowing grin on her face.

“Oh, sweetheart, I’ve missed you,” she urged him inside, and Lance fondly rolled his eyes while she pulled him into a hug. “How was Earth? Did you have fun?”

“I missed you too, Mom.” He squeezed her before letting go. “It was fine. I had… well, not fun. It was nice, though. Warm.”

Her hands held his shoulders with a light but sure touch, her smile warm and open. They were about the same height, though her preferred robes were customarily wide and fluttery and made her naturally more demanding of attention in comparison. She mindlessly began fixing the clasp at his shoulder. “Good, good. And are you feeling alright? You didn’t eat or drink too much in any of the cities, right?”

“No, Mother. It was really a normal trip.”

“I’m glad,” she breathed a sigh of relief before pulling him into another brief embrace. “I was worried. I know you’re always so responsible son, but you know things can get crazy when those from the Underworld visit. They just put me on edge.”

Lance let out a small exhale, reveling in the warmth of her embrace, a guilty twist in his gut intensifying for having lied to her about her brief not-so-normal encounter with the god of the underworld.

“I know, Mama, but we’re all okay now. See? I’m here, they’re gone. Everything’s _fine_.”

“You’re right, as always,” she laughed, giving him one more once over when she finally stepped back, and Lance scratched the back of his neck. “You’re probably exhausted from the travel and the time away. Hunk and Pidge were anxious to see you, of course, but I think I’d feel better if you at least took some time to stay home and relax.”

He managed to swallow the urge to groan. “Ahh. Sure. I’ll be in my room.”

“Excellent. I’ll be around, should you have need of me.”

With a brief, tight-lipped smile, Lance turned away and made a beeline for the adjacent hallway. The walls were wide, towering in height and spotlessly crisp grey and white with blue and gold patterns inlain in the molding at the base and ceiling. His eye traced a mindless path while he took the familiar route to his room, turning again at the end of the hallway.

His room opened to a sort of greenery, which his mother allowed after some insistence. It was divided into two levels, the top lined with his own collection of books and trinkets and other things he’d collected over the years, crowded by some chairs and comfortable seating. The lower level held his bed, closet, another sitting area, and then, about halfway into the circular expansion, the entirety of the room was cleanly severed from the rest of the room, like someone had burned the sun straight through into his room at a distinct angle, but instead of the otherside being reduced to ash and vapor, the workings of his private topiary had begun to overtake some of his more basic belongings. Vines and great, heavy leaves bowed towards the earth, ivy itched up the wall and with it clymadius blossoms tangled in the tendrils all the way up to the ceiling. Out, beyond, the foliage had grown so thickly that it was hard to tell what lie ahead, like the entrance to an Earthen jungle, and Lance generally preferred it that way. He liked seeing what the plants would do on their own if left to their devices for awhile, intervening only on occasion.

Releasing a long breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, Lance smiled and walked forward into his room, ready to --

_Just kidding._

His leg caught on something, and he fell face forward onto the cold, stone ground.

“Fuuuck,” he groaned, quiet enough that his voice wouldn’t carry to have his mother running down the hallway after him. “What did I...?”

At the edge of the doorway, he’d failed to notice a tome that had been left for him -- it looked like one of the books he’d borrowed from Adam. Crap, had _he_ left it there and forgotten to return it? Groaning, Lance rolled onto his backside and clawed at the book, pulling it forward and into his lap.

_A Comprehensive Guide to Botanical Taxonomy_

Oh, it was probably from Pidge or Hunk, or maybe even Matt if he’d been roped into the scheme by either of the former two; probably some sort of prank or stunt.

Cautiously, Lance thumbed the pages, opening to find, exactly as expected, a thick tome that detailed the taxonomic breakdowns of different varieties of plantlife as observed in the mortal world, illuminated with vivid descriptions and sketches of of different Earth plants and their subsequent names. It was one of his favorites, if only because it was amusing to see human’s label his own emotions in such a way -- that, what they called a _forget-me-not_ was in effect that hollow feeling of happiness he would feel after saying goodbye to someone, knowing he would not see them again for a long time, or that they correlated roses with romance when, in fact, they were just extensions of himself when he felt particularly conflicted about something -- thorns and petals, they were a heavy and complicated marriage between pain and beauty.

Just when Lance was starting to get sucked back into the text, he flipped to a page somewhere near the center of the tome and let out a little gasp.

There was a note wedged into the margins of the page, a black and dangerous looking vapor pouring out around it. His attention flickered to the image printed on the page beside it, honing in on the caption.

_Nerium oleander, or commonly, “oleander,” is a shrub or small tree, and it is toxic in all its parts. Sweet-scented, the petals cluster at the end of each ‘branch’ (for examples of ‘shrub branches’, pg. 191) and extend from the center in a pinwheel pattern, typically consisting of five petals. The leaves of nerium are lustrous and glossy.  Depending on the maturity of the nerium plant, the stems may have a glaucous quality and, in age, begin to take on a grayish, stiff quality not unlike bark. They bloom in red, pink, or white._

Lance’s heart sped up, fluttering hummingbird-quick in his chest, and he snapped his door shut with his foot while taking up the folded missive in his hands.

His fingers had never felt so clumsy in their haste to open the neatly creased piece of parchment, revealing a hasty scrawl underneath in an ink so black it reminded him of…

 

_Thanks again for the flower._

 

_P.S. If you still want to learn more about the Underworld, I have to go to again Earth in three days._

_Maybe I’ll see you there?_

 

_-K_

 


	2. Snowdrops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith tries to convince himself he doesn't care. Lance sleeps, runs, laughs, and is surprisingly honest. 
> 
> Afterwards, spoilers, Keith realizes he definitely cares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> regular chapter updates? don't know her
> 
> sadljfksldkfj im sorry this took so long to write and publish. ive been struggling with some writers block and a lot of ongoing projects, but i hope you all enjoy!! take good care xoxo

A realm of shadows, the Underworld was more often shrouded by misunderstanding than in the actual inky blackness with which it was so deeply associated. While it was true that the skies of the chthonic were cast in eternal night, the subterranean plane was not a place entirely pitched in darkness or marked by chasms filled by roaring flames that existed exclusively to torture the damned. The exceptions were much more frequent than the rule, in this case, and nowhere was it more apparent than if one simply looked skyward: there, one could not miss the iridescence brilliance of a celestial body, a lovely bauble that had occupied the skies since the fall of the Titans, and now, it hung eerily, eternally, to the west. Upon first glance for most mortals, the sight was mistaken for a moon, but it was much too large, too close, and, frankly, too wicked, to be a lunar entity like the one they were used to seeing on Earth.

Keith called it _Notos_.

Condensed within its moonglass surface was what appeared to be the centrifuge of a storm, the singular source of natural luminescence in the Underworld, and from its’ opalescent aura, a cloud-like vapor suffused the atmosphere. It was not unlike a pearl, but the outer walls were translucent, and gentle brushstrokes of lavender clouds poured out from its porous mass. The skies were infinitely black otherwise, and the ground was rendered in dark tones of charcoal, expanding out as far as he could see into ridges of dry plains and craggy mountains.

After having spent a few days with Shiro, Keith couldn’t help but reflect on how his own lands were so... _strange_. He didn’t understand why there were trees that grew, but would yield no leaves, or how there could be seas that crashed with waves when there was no wind, but it was, he supposed, not his job to _understand_. He did not create the world, nor was it made in his image; it had come to him from the divine equivalent of drawing straws with Shiro over who would rule where.

The Underworld was by no means the proverbial _short straw_ , though. While he was not one to gloat, Keith was at least self-aware and realistic enough to understand the indefatigable sense of power that attached itself to his realm, could understand why others looked at his subjects and world with fear and suspicion. There was a reason the Titans were kept here, leagues beneath the others, least of all for his convenience – it was the same reason he had  his appreciation for the power of this realm. It was inherently realistic that Keith could not conceivably understand _all_ of the workings of the realm itself, but it was _his_ , had been for as long as he could remember, and it was _home_.

After seven of Earth’s sun cycles, he was glad to be back.

Keith did not care much for the Overworld. It was bright as starburst, loud throughout as the deepest depths of Tartarus, and even the air tasted strangely sweet – compared to the mortal plane, which left a vaguely salty taste in the back of his throat. (The Underworld did not taste of anything in particular, which is how Keith felt it should be.)

That said, it had still been an important summit and Keith could not have avoided it if he wanted to. It was all part of the effort across planes to keep Chaos maintained. If ever the force grew too powerful, Zarkon, the entity’s physical form, could all too easily manifest from the flow of the Styx. As things were, the passage of life and death remained steady, and Chaos could not collect enough energy to take a shape great enough to wreak havoc, but it was always a threat, ever-present in the background.

And all of the heavenly deities had been, of course, perfectly hospitable hosts from beginning to end. They treated all of Keith’s subjects with their distinct brand of… well, _respect_ was one word for it. It was, more accurately, just poorly disguised fear masquerading as respect, but it still amounted to cordiality between all involved, so Keith wasn’t going to hedge any complaints.

Adam and Shiro were the only two he could reliably expect to act without fear around him, but even they weren’t immune to the veil of distrust between the attending daemons and other gods. They trusted Keith not to do anything and not to hurt anyone; they did not hold the same faith in his courtiers, however, and the occasional spark of tension could have very easily led to the destructive flames of dissent.

Alfor seemed in better spirits than usual, and he would even go so far as to say Lotor had been companionable, but he’d only been present for the first few days before his mother sent him on some errand. Coran was always friendly, of course, but otherwise… the attending deities and gods had all acted with severe reservations, their gazes frosty at best, outright contemptful at worst.

Frankly, Keith didn’t give a fuck what they thought about him. He’d long gotten past that insecurity and doubt – he was, and always would be, _this_. Where the Overworld gods were sanctified and adored by mortal and immortal alike, it was a necessary burden that an _evil_ stood against their goodness. And, while Keith was not evil, he was the best proxy for it in the minds of most. Fighting such a thing was more trouble than it was worth.

And yet…

 _I’m not a monster_.

Why had he felt so… _wary_ yesterday?

Time blurred together, but he was certain it had been a _very_ long time since he’d even worried about what someone thought about it. It felt like he’d taken a smithy's hammer and smacked down his own common sense, melted his resolve in the roaring fire of a forge and presented himself as stupid and vulnerable.

_I’m not a monster._

_No, I don’t suppose you are._

At present, the King of the Underworld stood at the outer edge of the balcony of his chambers, arms resting over the edge of the overhang. At his fingertips, Keith held the stem of a tiny flower, one that refused to wilt as he twirled it between thumb and forefinger.

He wasn’t supposed to _care_. Keith was supposed to be above worrying about things like that. Hell, Shiro had told him that he was the only one who could do a job such as this, _because_ he didn’t care.

No, as god of the dead, his duty was not to care; his responsibility was to oversee, to manage, to _maintain._

Sometimes, Keith felt rather like he lived within a paradox. Despite his title, the god was really only interested in preserving the universal balance, devoting all his time and focus to keeping the daemons under his fealty, and their subsequent responsibilities, in check, and keeping those who were eternally bound to Tartarus to _stay_ there.

 _Balance_. That was Keith’s purpose.

And yet, balance was not central to Keith’s own life.

By living chiefly in the interest of keeping order, placing the needs to the three realms above his own to ensure a chance at equitable life and death for all creatures, Keith had assured himself a liminal existence. As part of living up to that higher creed, there were personal consequences – he was the image of what was wrong and immoral _,_ looked upon as the abject ruler of a cursed domain. Being feared was essential to succeeding in a world such as this, because to rule with an iron fist made maintaining the greater balance that much easier.

That’s how people saw him, anyway. He was used to the persona – if anything, fear only made his job easier. But the reality was simply that Keith was just committed to being impartial, not cruel. After all, morality was necessarily vulnerable, and life was even more fragile.

Mortal or immortal, he saw all creatures die or fall from grace, corrupt or kill, cheat or lie or sneak, but it wasn’t his place to judge. Of all that was given life, Keith had to assure it all met its inevitable end.

With one very, very small exception.

His gaze followed the sway of the petals at his fingertips, pausing after rotating it a few times, and then spinning it back.

_Keep it._

Pause, spin, repeat.

How did it _survive_ down here?

He might have stood there and examined the little flower for hours, for he had little interest in tracking the time, or much else, really, aside from reliving the past few days.

Aside from the steady stream of atmosphere that oscillated from _Notos_ , the entire Underworld was either black, white, purple or red. There were no exceptions.

Many daemons were purple-skinned, but just as many were pale or dark entities, some with shocks of white tresses that made them look remarkably like fallen angels, and others with jet-black hair that were messy and unkempt, like Keith’s own. With nothing besides those few shades painting the landscape, the sky, the oceans, the _people_ , it was easy to forget about how much more there could be, especially after long stretches without seeing Shiro and Adam.

Keith had always assumed other shades were reserved for the Overworld gods or those who dwelled on Earth in the mortal plane; here, beneath the muted glow of _Notos_ , there had been no other color to exist, not anywhere, not even in the roaring fires of the Phlegethon, not since the Titans fell.

Until yesterday. There was a new life here now, glowing and radiant and elegant. Sharper than purple, cooler than white, more fragile than black, less violent than red, it was _alive_ and it would not die, immutable even at his immolant finger tips.

 _Blue_.

Keith bit his lower lip and stopped twirling the oleander blossom, holding it still.

He had protested accepting the flower, claiming he hadn’t _done_ anything to deserve it – and that was absolutely true. In fact, he’d practically run his mouth, divulging much more than he normally would with a perfect stranger, but there was something about that god that had just been so… _intriguing_? A turn of his head that was mesmerizing like a cloak and the sharpness of daggers in his smile, a sense of humor that didn’t seem concerned with catering to Keith’s name or title, some sort of… _sincerity_ that he was unused to, especially in strangers.

A bit amused, Keith had to wonder if the god had poor survival instincts. Most people’s instincts make them reel upon seeing him, but Lance?

Lance brought life to _flowers_ around him. A meadow of his own amusement.

Privately, Keith was even glad that the dark-skinned, quick-witted god had insisted he take this tiny blue flower, because Keith was genuinely mystified with its lambent petals. He wanted to study it, understand it, figure out where to keep it – all distractions from what he _should_ be doing, but this was similar to the novelty that had been raising Kosmo from puppy to proper hellhound.

Keith was entirely unpracticed in the ways of enjoying something just… just _because_. It seemed so senseless and wasteful and sort of beautifully _simple_.

_I didn’t really do anything._

_You didn’t really have to. That’s the point of a gift._

He banished the thought, cheeks rushing with warmth.

It was probably dumb of him to have left that book, right? Just thinking about it made him uneasy, almost _embarrassed_ – why did he _do_ that? Keith groaned, running a hand down his face and slouching into his folded arms.

Stupid impulse, stupid flustered emotions – he just wanted to thank Lance properly, but didn’t want to get him into trouble with his mother. But a _book?_ The idea had come to him It had been a bit of a cheap substitute in exchange for the tiny, stubborn flower that had brought new light to the Underworld, but he hadn’t known what else to do.

He should have just slipped the note under Lance’s sheets or something – but then, that would have been weird, too. (“Hey, Lance, thanks for not being judgemental and surprisingly nice to me, I really appreciate the flower. Also I broke into your room to leave you this note and unmade your bed to hide it. Don’t freak out, I promise I’m not scary or creepy!”)

Ugh, and _then_ Keith lost his nerve with his stupid shaking hands and scribbled out the first thing that came to mind.

_Maybe I’ll see you there?_

Gods, what was he _thinking_?

The book was from his personal library, but it wasn’t particularly special or meaningful – he just didn’t know what else to give. It was the first thing that had come to mind when he slipped back down to the Underworld before the proceedings concluded, and he thought the text _seemed_ inconspicuous so that if Melenor just stumbled upon it, she wouldn’t have any reason to be suspect. But a book on botany and flowers in human scripture? In retrospect, such a thing might have even been insulting – it was like a weird biography written by a different species that had no idea what they were really talking about, like someone leaving a scroll with a picture of a red-horned, red-tailed, fiery devil on his doorstep and saying “hey, this reminded me of you, so I wanted you to have it!”

Fucking hell. Keith felt like a gigantic idiot, flushing this time in mortification.

And Keith, frustrated with his own – _preoccupation_ , that’s what he’d call it, because he certainly hadn’t developed any sort of _feelings_ – didn’t even realize he was being watched. It was unlike him, which made it all the more fun for his audience.

The titular goddess of witchcraft and magic, known to many as _Hecate_ , floated out onto the balcony outside of Keith’s chambers that oversaw the realm at one of the highest points, so close to _Notos_ it seemed you could reach out and touch it.

She glimpsed over the god’s shoulder, raising a thin brow at the vibrant, aquamarine and phosphorescent petals.

“Ooooh, how pretty!” the girl sang in his ear, and Keith flinched so suddenly he nearly dropped the flower over the ledge. “What _is_ this little flower?”

“ _Romelle_ ,” Keith said through grit teeth, face turning even darker in embarrassment. “I _hate_ when you do that. Why can’t you _walk_ like a normal person?”

Laughing, high and musical, the girl touched down onto the stone steps beside him, propping her chin up on a hand as she rested an elbow against the stone.

“ _Normal_ ,” the girl sighed meaningfully. “That’s rich, coming from _you_. So, what is it you’ve got? Something bewitched? Cursed? Let me see, let me see!”

While it was sort of silly, Keith’s immediate reaction was to be defensive, turning the flower inward and holding it close to his chest, away from her grabby hands.

“ _No_ , it’s not cursed or any of your weird, witchy stuff. It’s just… alive. If you must know.”

“Who are you trying to pull one on, honestly?” She hummed questioningly, scrutinizing his guilty, if-not flustered, expression. “I wasn’t born last century.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” he shot back before turning and marching towards his room, leaving the goddess to grumpily follow after him. “It’s really nothing like you’re thinking.”

Keith let out a large breath of air before setting the oleander down on the dresser across. Crossing the room, he slid down to sit on the edge of the mattress, facing Romelle as she leaned in the doorway leading in from the balcony.

“Why are you always so mean?” she huffed with feigned irritation.

He rolled his eyes. “Why are you always so whiny?”

“Because! The Underworld is so _boring_ , and seeing as you didn’t let me join you in the Overworld, you better bet I’m going to complain!”

“It’s not my fault the Overworld kicked you out. You’re lucky I even took you in.”

The tall goddess _hmmp_ ’d moodily, flipping her long hand over her shoulders and straightening her posture. Arms crossed, she sent the chthonic ruler a hardened glare.

“Three things. One, you’re grateful I’m here so don’t even try it with the _holier than thou_ act. And yes, I realize the irony, thank you, _Your_ _Majesty_.”

Keith snorted lightly, but did not interrupt. He knew Romelle wasn’t actually upset with with him, and he didn’t mind – this had been the way of their friendship for over a thousand years. If they were well and truly fighting over something, which was itself a rarity for how difficult it was to disturb Romelle’s breezy nature, they would slip into stony silences rather than carry out clipped conversations.

“Two, I wasn’t _kicked_ out. Shiro and Adam both love me very much and the _only_ reason I am here is because I didn’t want you to be stuck alone all the time… and, the added freedom is nice, _I guess_. Shiro and Alfor were all _don’t do this_ and _don’t do that_. Adam was pretty cool about it but –”

Carding a hand through his hair, Keith fingered through the tangled locks at the end, almost bored. “That’s not _freedom_ , Rom’, it’s _Chaos_. But go on.”

She acted like she hadn’t heard him.

“Three, I _could_ go back at any point. But I _won’t_ , not until I find Bandor.”

“Ah.” Keith pursed his lips, sensing an edge of sincere anger edging her tone, and he tried to appear apologetic. “Sorry, Romelle. I really didn't mean it.”

The goddess hugged her arms over her chest, a little more tightly than before. “I know. I didn’t mean to make things all serious and be a downer, either... Sorry. I guess I was just lonely for the past week without you or Krolia or Kolivan or anyone… Not that _Kolivan_ is exactly good company.”

She cracked a grin at the afterthought, which Keith returned.

“What, you mean you don’t love chatting it up with Kolivan?”

“ _Rude_ ,” she gasped teasingly, strolling away from the open doors and approaching the wardrobe opposite the bed.

Plucking up the luminous flower, the goddess brought it close to her nose in scrutiny. “So, really, what’s the story behind this? If it’s not cursed or corrupted, what did you do to it?”

Wrinkling his nose, Keith watched her with rapt attention, his stare flintly and narrowed, but the goddess’s touch was the epitome of gentle. He tried to convince himself to relax.

“ _I_ didn’t do anything to it. It’s really just a flower. A gift from someone.”

“ _Someone_?” She looked up from her examination to fix him with a doubtful expression, to which Keith could only shrug.

“Just, another god. Melenor’s… son.”

“Melenor’s…” repeating the words quietly, Romelle tested her jaw, appearing like she was trying to chew the words before letting them fall from her lips. “I thought she had a daughter – oh, why can’t I remember her name?”

“I thought that too – _Persephone_. That’s just part of the human’s mythos about him, I guess. His name is Lance.”

This time, Romelle held the flower up and out, closing one eye and moving it back and forth from her face, like it might change form or shape if she looked at it differently.

“So what did this Lance do? Why is it so… glowy? You’re sure he wasn’t a forest sprite or something? Those creatures are known to tricksters, you know.”

Keith shook his head. “No, he was definitely a god. I mean, he didn’t have any reason to lie to me, he didn’t even know who I was when he introduced himself. I ran into him by accident on Earth and there were flowers everywhere, and he insisted that I keep one. It was nice. I guess this is just his thing – his _domain_. Flowers and plants and stuff. ”

Like a switch flickering on and off, Romelle’s curious, if not humorously, over-inquisitive expression, was wiped from her face and replaced by an accusatory sort of curiosity, as if Keith had done something wrong and was about to be punished.

“Wait a moment… that would mean, if this isn’t some sort of primal enchantment, then the reason it glows – this was an impression of his own essence?”

“Um, I think so? You’re the expert, why are you even asking –”

“I’m not, just thinking aloud,” Romelle interrupted, a hum behind the words. There was a tilt to her smirk that Keith did not trust, not one bit.

Standing, he crossed the room and took the flower from her, which she dropped into his open palm without protest.

Romelle’s grin only widened.

“ _What?_ ”

“Mmm. Oh _nothing_ ,” she laughed, the sound so effervescent her toes left the ground, robes billowing around her as they did whenever she floated. “It just seems... hmm, _surprising_ that a young, unsuspecting god gave you a _flower_ , one that was imparted with energy from his own _soul_. That’s pretty significant for a gift.”

A bit surprised, Keith felt his face grow hot so he promptly turned away. “I – is it? I wouldn’t know.”

Romelle began to drift after him, so Keith made a beeline for the door and began to march down the hallway.

“Let me ask you something.”

Oh no. He did _not_ like that tone, not one bit.

“No.”

“Do you –”

“ _No_.”

She was insistent.

“Aw, c’mon Keith!”

Annoyingly so.

“ _One_ question!”

He had to stop moving because she flipped overtop him in midair, blocking his path. Hair slightly amess, her eyes were wide with knowing mischief, and Keith considered reminding her who was the one actually in charge around here – but, instead, he sighed in defeat. Romelle was a friend, which were few and far between for him, so he didn’t want to push her away.

Knowing full well he would regret it, Keith spoke between grit teeth. “Fine. _One_.”

Romelle clapped her hands together, touching down in the hallway as she fixed her expression into something more neutral.

She cleared her throat.

“Was he cute?”

“I’m leaving.”

Keith turned and began to head the other way. It was true he’d just come from this direction and the place he needed to go was the other way, but he’d find a way around.

“ _Keith wait!”_

He’d jump out the window if he had to.

 

* * *

 

After successfully escaping Romelle and any of her subsequent questions, Keith managed to administer his talent in willful avoidance of the subject altogether. He had things to take care of after being away for so long, anyway – Kosmo whined and cried for his attention for nearly twenty minutes when he’d first shown up to the entrance (“ _Some guardian you are,_ ” Keith had snorted, scratching behind the hellhound’s ears which led to the _fearsome_ beast flopping on its side, belly bared for the world to scratch.); making stops at the Gate of Dawn and Elysium, as well as the Gate of Shade and the Stygian Marsh. Ulaz, ferryman of the dead, reported nothing unusual in his regular motions along the water.

These were no short journeys, taking up the majority of Keith’s remaining days below the surface world before he’d said he had to go back to Earth. He could have easily opened rifts and come out at any of the locations, but he preferred to peruse the lands, check for irregularities, ensure there were no spots where the realm thinned – if any of the bonds that held the hierarchical shape of the three realms in place were to wear down, the entire structure could collapse, and his own realm’s were weakest in the mountains.

Hypothetically, anyway. That was what Matt’s research suggested, but the more metaphysical shit things got, the less Keith was able to grasp. The bottom line was that there were pockets of weakness in all of the realms, and tears could occur, and that would be _bad_.

According to Matt, very, _very_ bad.

He shuddered at the thought, and the motion dragged him effectively back to the present. Three days, and then-some, had passed, and now he could put it off no longer. The hour was later than he realized on Earth, and he just hoped Lance had some patience.

Keith stepped through the rift he created, focusing on that same field as before, unsure how he’d gotten stuck there but certain he wasn’t going to forget about it anytime soon.

He passed through the time-space shift, and Lance _was_ there, hadn’t left before he had the chance to show up. Keith saw him first, for which he was grateful. It gave him the much-needed chance to gather the remaining shreds of his courage.

It was like he’d stepped into the gossamery space of dreams, a place upon which he was intruding merely by arriving. Keith could not fathom such a place existing outside of the imagination, not even in the Overworld with its saturated, velveteen air and overstated vibrancy; this was a space of soft, muted tones, pale and pretty with green bursts of a pastoral backdrop accented by dewdrops of beautiful white wildflowers.

If Keith could have mistaken Lance for a figure from a painting before, his appearance accented by splashes of color and warm, tanned skin that absorbed the sunshine, then, by moonlight, he looked… almost _seraphic_. Superlunary, almost _untouchably_ ethereal, the god of flowers was laid back in an overgrown valley of grass that was messy and imperfect, bell-shaped petals and convex leaves bowing to the earth all around him. Beneath the bright spill of silver moonlight, the baubles of petals seemed to _glow_ , and Lance’s dark skin was pitched to sepian twilight, hair matching in the unkempt image of indifference.

It was so _quiet_.

Probably not by coincidence, Lance appeared to be asleep.

One arm rested on his chest, the other splayed out to the side, Keith watched as he breathed steadily and slowly with his mouth ever-so-slightly open. Aquamarine scales shimmered at the corners of his eyes, the pale blue dancing beneath the white basquing presence of the sky and stars overhead.

And Keith couldn’t even _breathe_ , his ribs constricting, his heart going spectacularly haywire.

It felt almost criminal to interrupt such a sight, but as a quiet breeze drifted into the valley and shuffled hair and petals loosely, enough that they brushed against the god’s arm and bare calves, Keith thought it would be best to wake him intentionally. (Waking naturally to find someone staring at you was probably a little uncomfortable, and that was to say nothing about that _someone_ being the god of the dead and King of the Underworld.)

Taking a few steps back, the chthonic god cleared his throat.

“ _Lance_?” he spoke clearly, and it was loud enough to do as intended.

Blue eyes blearily parted, squinting at the sea of stars far above, light catching in the whites as he reoriented himself.

“Mmm… hmm?” hummed the other, stretching as he sat up and twisted around to face Keith. A small grin pulled at the corner of his mouth, the remnants of sleep making his expression open and relaxed. “Oh, hi. Sorry, I guess I fell asleep...”

“Hi.” Keith said, focusing on the tilt in Lance’s smile, trying to remember his own name. “And, uh, don’t apologize. It took me longer getting here than I planned. I hope you weren’t waiting for too long.”

Already waving a hand, Lance used his other to cover his mouth through a yawn. “Naaah, it’s no problem. I didn’t even really mean to sleep, just sort of happened.”

Lance paused, giving Keith a thorough once over – long enough to make the ruler of the Underworld wonder if he should have tried to do something with his appearance besides just _show up_ – but, whatever he saw there must have been deemed good enough, because Lance continued to appear breezy and unbothered as a western wind.

Lance patted a spot on the ground beside him. “Well, come sit down! Don’t loom over there all awkward and broody.”

“Broody?” Keith rolled his eyes, though he accepted the invitation to sit without further complaint, doing his best to mind the beautiful mess of white flowers all around, trying to maneuver _around_ rather than through their unbridled overgrowth.

Some of the flowers, Keith noticed, were no longer just the same curving bell-shaped blossoms, but had begun to crowd in with others, larger, flattened petals that were splayed skyward.Unlike their first encounter, however, these blossoms held no color; as such, they seemed unaffected by Keith’s presence, the inevitable drain of life from his own essence when impressed upon the earth, and were just as vibrantly white as they’d been before he approached.

“Does this happen every time?”Just as transfixed as he had been the first time in the wide open field, Keith was only halfway seated when he quietly asked, “Does this happen _everywhere_ you go?”

“What?” Lance responded, confused, before realizing what Keith meant a few seconds later.

“Ooh, _that_. No, and yes? It… well, it’s only _supposed_ to happen when I’m doing it on purpose, buuuuuut flowers are kind of… hard to control? They’re really weirdly... emotional. Sorta like my mother, how if she gets upsets, crops fail, except crops don’t do like _extra_ good because she’s happy. They do, just, like, average? Hmm... it’s like, I have to make an active effort to _not_ make any flowers rather than the reverse, which is how it _should_ be… which is sort of frustrating, you know? I don’t always want them all over the place.”

Lance chuckled and scratched the back of his neck, looking away. “Ah, sorry, that was sort of a long answer to a simple question.”

“It’s fine,” Keith reassured, tentatively crossing his legs and leaning towards the nearest cluster of bell-shaped flowers. “I like them, it’s better than having a life-sucking cloud surrounding you at all times.”

He sounded a bit more bitter than intended, but Lance didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he bubbled with a laugh so bright it made the grass around them grow brighter green for a few seconds.

It was loud, and perhaps even a little obnoxious. Part of him – a large part of him – wanted to grit his teeth together and felt very exhausted just by the other god’s blinding brightness.

Another, smaller, defiant part of him, secluded to the base of his stomach squeezed and churned in a way that was strangely thrilling, and Keith found he had to look away in order to get his thoughts in order.

Once his laughter subsided, Lance repositioned himself in the grass so his legs were folded sideways, and he was facing Keith perpendicularly. “So, did you come straight here from the Underworld? Or did you need to take care of… uh, whatever you needed to come down here for?”

“It’s _up_ ,” Keith corrected. “For me, I mean. _Down_ in the Underworld has a very different connotation than it does for you.”

Lance blinked. “O-Oh. Sure. My bad.”

“No, no it’s – _fine_.” Keith sighed, pleading with his nerves _relax_ , taking a moment to brush back his bangs and trailing a nervous hand over the slight curvature of his horns. “You wouldn’t have any way of knowing. Um, to answer your question, I didn’t get the chance to do what I wanted. But it’s fine, I can do it later, it was my fault for being late.”

“Mmm.” A frown bowed Lance’s lips, and Keith was overwhelmed with the sudden, very pretty, shape of them. He hadn’t noticed enough specific traits about Lance the first time, too taken aback with his… well, _everything_ to give any of his finer features due appreciation. Indeed, Keith still wasn’t wholly convinced that Lance wasn’t a nymph with some sort of long-term agenda, because those creatures were fashioned to look far lovelier than anyone had the right, like a visual iterations of Poseidon's sirens, beauty crafted to ensnare the unsuspecting in their bewitching appearance instead of by song.

And, gods – Lance’s lips were _moving_ , and Keith couldn’t even hear what words were being spoken, his heart rate rising to a fever pitch, his urge to sit and quietly talk driven over the stern because it was all he could do to not reach out and _touch_ Lance. Not in any sort of intimate way, besides to just make sure he was really there.

A voice that sounded an awful lot like Romelle giggled in his ear.

_Is he cute?_

Shit.

 _Shit_ , he was much worse than _cute._

Fingers snapped in front of his eyes, and the chthonic god flinched back. “Keith, _hello_? Geez, you’ve got this serious, like, _I’m pissed look_ on your face. You should work on not looking like you want to murder people all of the time.”

“I – _sorry_ , I was just – remembering something.” His tongue felt weighted by lead, uncoordinated and stupid and unable to make words and sentences. His face was _definitely_ burning. “Um, a conversation with a friend, you just reminded me – forget it.”

Lance’s soft blue markings fluttered lightly, and if Keith’s imagination wasn’t getting out of hand, he thought the tan-skinned god appeared to be flushed.

“I, um, okay. It’s okay, just… are you sure you want to hang out right now? That you’re not, you know, _mad_? You kinda… _look_ mad.”

“No, no, I want this, definitely – ” _real smooth, idiot,_ he chastised internally and tried to turn the conversation towards something a little less embarrassing. “Shiro says I always look pissed about something. That’s just my face.”

Mercifully, Lance let it go, holding up the back of his hand to his mouth to stifle his own laughter. “I mean, he’s not wrong. I think the all-black eyes don’t help your case, no offense.”

“None taken,” Keith snorted. “My eyes aren’t always like this. I do it when I come up here, or, especially for the _Overworld_ , it’s _so_ bright – it’s to help block out some of the light, otherwise it can give me a headache.”

Without really thinking about it, Keith closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, feeling the restrictive blackness of his sclera withdraw behind his eyelids.

When he blinked back into focus, Lance’s own blue eyes widened, he and all the surrounding plains looking even brighter than before. Keith could, in a strange extrasensory sort of way, _feel_ that his own pupils and irises were still pitched darkly, but that he’d returned to having whites to his eyes, which usually suited him best only below the surface.  

“ _Wow._ ” Lance leaned in a bit, eyes bright and sharp as they held his own, glancing back forth. “Can you do that with other things too?”

The sudden intensity of Lance’s attention had him want to simultaneously throw himself off the nearest cliff and lean forward and meet him in his nearness. Keith opted for neither, simply looking away.

Coughing, he said, “What were you saying?”

Lance took in a slow, deep inhale and turned his head down, focusing on a patch of grass directly in front of him, one finger extended as he traced out a complex bouquet of beautiful petals and vines that Keith could not for his life identify.

“Huh? Oh, I was just asking what’d you need to do _up_ here, anyway?” Lance scratched his chin with a questioning furrow to his brow. “I feel like the Underworld must have pretty crazy digs, so what would _you_ need to do on Earth?”

Keith looked at him wryly upon his emphasis of the word _you_ , but decided not to comment on it.

“There’s a text I need to collect from the Library of Athens. I swear I didn’t plan for things to keep coming back to books.”

( _I did, I planned this, I’m lying through my teeth.)_

“Oh.” Lance seemed almost amused by that, but Keith was just glad to see him smiling again, more relaxed than before. “Well, okay. What’s the book?”

( _I have no fucking idea. This was the only thing I could think of on short notice.)_

“Nothing special, really. Just –” And as he was halfway through forming his answer, Keith instead tried for an ambiguous smirk as he began to collect himself and stand back up again.

Offering a hand to help Lance to his feet, he said, “I guess you’ll have to come with me and find out.”

For a half a second, Lance looked at Keith’s outstretched hand in surprise, but it was quickly replaced by a flicker of challenge, like he’d been dared to perform a dangerous task instead of just accompany Keith to the library.

“Alright, sounds like fun,” he replied, accepting the help to stand, and Keith _swore_ he felt like the stars sparkled in reaction to the touch.

It was just a chaste brush of fingertips in the few seconds while Lance righted himself, but Keith felt his throat burning, skin tingling, that same inexorable temptation that he’d felt when he first settled into the grass field to _touch_ Lance increasing tenfold. His hands were so soft. Fingers long, cold in the places where his gold plated jewelry touched but smooth and warm everywhere else.

Keith had met many men and women the realms over who were helpless to their vices. Whether they suffered at the avaricious hands of greed or gluttony, the hateful paths of wrath or envy, the self-entitled endowment of lust or pride, or the simple apathy of laziness, no mortal or immortal was immune to temptation, and many fell to their knees at the beck of any combination of their particular poison. It was the exploitation thereof that weighed into the ruling on how and where a life-ended would spend their death: at peace, in misery, or somewhere in between, depending on the exact nature and degree of their sins.

It was silly to pretend he was above base impulses for the same reasons, but this was the first time in a long time that he almost failed to fight back the urge. _Gods_. How badly he wanted to just take a few steps closer, to put himself into Lance’s space and be absorbed in the radiant warmth of it. Just brushing their hands together made his brain and heart short-circuit, moving off rhythm with each other.

But Keith couldn’t. _Couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t_. Keith couldn’t and he knew it from the moment he first laid eyes on Lance that he was going to have to resist _this_. It was the same reason he ran from Romelle when asked about Lance – Keith didn’t want to admit it, because that seemed easier, but if just _one touch_ had left him reeling, what was he supposed to do? He just _couldn’t_ take advantage of Lance’s naivete, no matter how badly he wanted to run the tips of his fingers down the delicate slope of his jaw, to brush a thumb over cheek marks to see if they would flicker beneath his touch, to trace the unheard words right from the subtle shape of Lance’s lips with his own tongue and teeth, to test the shape of syllables and shy smiles that were tucked privately between words.

All of this internal crisis elapsed in perhaps the three seconds it took Lance to brush any grass from sticking to his legs and untangle a small bramble of ivy that had snaked around his ankle. _Ugh_. It was even adorable that he couldn’t control his domain.

Yes, Keith was certain that this was a bad idea.

“Alright, how are we getting there?” Lance asked brightly, hands at his hips. “I’m not sure I trust you with portal coordinates after the first time you showed up here.”

Keith took a deep breath, praying to the night to grant him patience and the will of a saint, and forced his voice to turn flat.

“I’ll make a rift,” he answered, ignoring the teasing. “Wouldn’t want to leave a trail of vines all the way to the city, would we?”

“Hey, I told you that in confidence!” pouted Lance, his retort falling flat as he kicked off a creeping vine.

Keith let out a bereft snort and turned around, raising a hand and tracing a wire through the delicate web of the realms, plucking at a chord that would bring them from here to just inside the Athen’s library.

Once he’d found it, Keith readily unthreaded the stitching of reality and, with ease, opened a rift from one plane to the next.

Lance hummed, a decidedly unimpressed sound, and marched ahead without waiting for Keith to follow. The chthonic god rolled his eyes and quickly strode after him.

“You could have at least waited until I said it was clear,” he sighed, stepping into the dark, empty building. “What if there were humans around?”

“Then I’d have said a daemon was attacking me and cried for help, obviously.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“And your hairs a total mess.” Lance cocked his head to the side in a way that could only be described as smug. “So if we’re done pointing out the obvious, I believe there was a book you needed?

In his ear, Keith could practically _hear_ Shiro whisper, _patience yields focus._ He sighed and closed the rift behind them.

The library itself, where the books were housed, was actually rather small – but the surrounding building was in fact a sprawling structure, flat and wide rather than tall as far as Athenian buildings went. More than three-fifths of the building, the southern part that was attached to Athen’s streets, was a lecture space with amphitheater-style seating. That was of little interest to Keith for the occasion, and he’d opted to drop them right in the actual book repository in the back of the building.

The room was filled by books and scripture, all crowded on the towering shelves. Given the late hour, there were no torches lining the walls, the only source of light spilling in from the piercing oculus in the very center of the ceiling, pouring a stream of silver moonlight above their heads and faintly illuminating the lines of shelves around them. A faintly earthy scent had attached itself to the space, an echo of papyrus that had settled into the furnishings of the room like a mist. Behind them, in the direction of the front door, the double doors were closed that would lead out into the atrium and lecture spaces, and around them were a cluster of desks for scholars to use during the daytime.

On the left and right sides of the room, there was a small doorway that fed into larger reading rooms and an accompanying lecture space for more intimate speeches and discourse than the larger assembly space in the front half of the building.

Keith jerked his head to the left and urged Lance to follow him. He did, in fact, have a specific book in mind, but it was also one he’d left there about two hours ago from his own private collection in the Underworld. He wasn’t lying about needing to _collect_ a book, and that it wasn’t important, but he _might_ have been a bit misleading.

They were silent but for their hushed footfalls, and Keith opened the door and maneuvered around a row of desks, eyes scanning the shelves, leaving Lance to wander. Again, he knew exactly where he left the book, but he had to make this look convincing.

Eventually, Lance broke the silence, his voice little more than a hum.

“I’ve been to Athens a bunch, but it’s always so crowded during the day… it’s sort of amazing at night like this.” He spoke with hands folded behind his back, floating around and casting his gaze around the endless shelves.

Unable to resist, Keith retorted “I’m surprised your mother even allows you to read.”

“Hey,” Lance shot him a contemptful look. “She may be strict, but she’s still my mother. How about you _not_ make comments like that?”

“Fine, fine,” Keith waved him off, turning drifting down the aisle, eyes searching for the subject of their visit. “This isn’t that impressive though. Have you seen –”

“Adam’s collection?” Lance finished, spinning in place and locking eyes with him, smiling. “Oh man, I’ve probably read everything there already! That book you, uh, stuck the note in –” he paused, clearing his throat. “That’s a favorite of mine, I borrow it from him all the time. Mostly because it’s silly how they mislabel stuff, like how humans think certain flowers mean certain things. They’re not wrong _all_ the time, but it’s still iffy.”

Keith paused, trying not to let his relief show that Lance hadn’t been offended by his choice of text as he let that information sink in, and then kept walking.

“It was the first book that jumped out to me that made me think of you. Flowers and all,” he explained. Lance remained silent, peering high over a shelf at some dust-lined spines. “Anyway, it’s just through here.”

That seemed to pique Lance’s interest again, and he hustled to catch up with Keith at the end of the aisle. They had nearly wandered all the way to the northwestern corner of the building, save for two small carts that were shoved into a corner.

Keith walked up to the cart, bending his knees to get to eye-level with the piles of texts available.

“What are you getting?” Lance asked after a few seconds. “Do you want me to help you find it?”

“Oh, that’s alright,” Keith shook his head, reaching between two thick volumes and extracting a small booklet, thin, about half the width of a regular piece of parchment with a brightly colored red cover. “I found it.”

“What is it?”

 _An excuse to see you,_ he wanted to confess, but found he wasn’t able to go through with it. Pulse thick in his throat, Keith answered carefully, not wanting to lie outright.

“It’s just something that was important to me. That’s all.”

“You said you’d tell me if I came with you,” Lance wrinkled his nose. “That’s hardly an answer.”

A smirk edged into his expression, and Keith turned around with a shrug. “That’s what you get for putting your trust in the god of the underworld. Tough shit.”

“ _Wow_ ,” Lance remarked, voice practically dripping with sarcasm. “I’m _so_ glad you’re living up to all my expectations.”

The wording of that sounded... odd, to Keith. He raised a brow and glanced at Lance over his shoulder.

“And what other expectations did you have of me?”

Instead of answering, Lance made an offended noise and marched right past him, back into the main repository – which, really, Keith found silly, because they could just go back to the field now that they’d gotten the book, but he was also finding that it was sort of fun to get under Lance’s skin.

The tan-skinned god was pushing open the doors to the main portion of the library, sighing meaningfully as Keith caught up to him, like he’d rather walk all the way back to Thebes than be in Keith’s company. It was –

“ _Hey!_ ” A voice shouted suddenly, and they both jumped. Down the length of the atrium, two human with long robes and torches had spotted them, the lights of their eyes both flashing in the firelight. “What are you doing – this place is off-limit for – _hey!”_

“L-Lance, wait!” Keith hadn’t really cared about the prospect of being caught “trespassing,” because the worst that would happen is they would get a proper look at him and make a break for it, begging for their lives, and the best case scenario would be to just quickly open a rift and then leave.

What Keith had failed to account for was the possibility that Lance was about to _book it_ upon being spotted. The eastern wall was lined with four balconies, all of which had open doors to welcome the cool night air, and he _sprinted_ to the nearest one and flipped out it into the street below.

Keith gaped at him for all of one heartbeat, just long enough to think _what the fuck_ , before he was thundering after him and following his lead into the mercifully empty street below.

The draining effect his presence had on the mortal world did not, after all, affect only plants; there was a reason Keith tended to avoided the cities. But he didn’t have the chance to think about that now, his instincts all twisted together in the same vertiginous whirl of _what the fuck, where is he he turned at that alley I’m going to kill him – lungs burning on this stupid Earthen atmosphere –- running – running – almost there_ –

And he was catching up pretty easily, but Athenians had long legs and knew, evidently, how to use them.

“Get back here!” one of them cried out, and Keith very nearly thought to shout back, _Yeah well if I do you’re both fucking dead the second you catch up with me so maybe I’d better not –_

At the next corner, Lance glanced over his shoulder at Keith, a wicked glint in his eye that was somewhere between panic and thrill and _please-don’t-kick-my-ass_ , and he turned sharply down the opening in the street.

This was so stupid. Keith couldn’t even marvel at the absurdity of _running from_ _humans who wanted to catch them_ because he was too busy _running from humans so they wouldn’t fucking die_ and following Lance’s stupid path, turning left at the same corner to which he’d sprinted towards. Lance was stopped about halfway down the length of the, gesturing wildly with his arms.

“Portal! Rift! Now!” he demanded, and Keith wanted to _punch_ him, but the sound of two stupid humans with a death wish was growing louder by the moment so he just raised his hand and repeated the familiar motion, dissolving the space behind Lance to reveal a swirling tear in realities.

Pushing himself forward with frightening force, Keith grabbed Lance by the shoulder and shoved him into the rift, only a breath behind him, closing it the instance he felt the crisp emptiness of the field outside of Thebes.

Keith landed face on his side, the holster for his knife digging into his pelvis, and Lance was splayed face down in the grass, already starting to shift in his company.

“You are so fucking _stupid_ ,” groaned the god of the dead, hauling himself up and gripping his forehead, disoriented. His lungs were burning and legs ached from the sudden burst of running only to abruptly stop again. “Why the fuck would you _run?!”_

“I – I panicked!” Lance said, voice muffled, turning his head to face Keith with cheeks aflame, marks shining with an almost-offensive shade of blue. “I just – I didn’t know what to _do_ , I usually blend in during the day and I didn’t want to get in trouble and what if my – oh my god, I’m so fucking dumb, you’re right. AHH!”

Lance was laughing by the end, turning onto his back and covering his face with his hands. His shoulders were shaking and he was giggling, the sound soft melodic and swelling with euphoria.

“You _are_ dumb, fucking hell, I can’t believe – and you just _jumped from a goddamn window!_ ” Keith ran a hand through his hair, a habit he’d developed from stress. Glaring over at the sprawled out god beside him, bubbling with laughter that sounded of diaphanous bells, Keith wanted so badly to be angry. To be annoyed and pissed and to kick him in the shins or something for doing something so stupid.

Oh, but Keith was weak, _weak,_ and he knew it.

It wasn’t going to be possible for him to stay upset, not when there were colorful blossoms popping up all around him, accompanied by the purity of uninhibited laughter. Keith was unpracticed when it came to the company of most living things, and even less so with someone so heartbreakingly _beautiful_ , overcome with such blatant joy beside him.

Seeing Lance like that – blue eyed, face flushed, head turned sideways in the grass, arms folded over his stomach to fight off a cramp from laughing so hard – it was the loveliest thing Keith had ever seen, already cementing itself in his mind as one of his favorite memories, and it wasn’t even _over_ yet.

And before he really realized, Keith was laughing too. Mostly at Lance for being so – so _Lance_ , and maybe a little at himself for the ridiculousness of it all.

He’d set up a fake reason to go to the library, needing an excuse to spend time with Lance, only to proceed to get caught by _humans_ , and then they fled the scene, taking to the streets? What were they, teenagers? It felt like so silly, but the adrenaline pumping in his blood was very real, and his heart was incredibly full, and the snickering that hit him so hard he landed flat on his back in the grass was all too present.

By the time they both stopped laughing, which was at least five whole minutes – each time one of them started to stop, the other started again, and it created this terrible cycle of snickering and snorting to the point where they were both practically in hysterics.

Sighing, Keith looked up at the stars. He felt a buzzing along the left-side of his body, where Lance had ended up in the grass – it was almost the same position they’d started the night in, except now Keith was laying beside him.

And it was… it was _nice_.

Divine only in its simplicity, not by their titles or responsibilities. His nerves didn’t feel pull taut by every looming decision and duty in the back of his mind – he didn’t think about Kolivan, or Kosmo, or Romelle, or Ulaz, or Thace. He didn’t think about Zarkon or Chaos or Tartarus or the Titans.

For just a few minutes, all of the attachments that had tethered him to an eternity of upholding a balance, from which he reaped no rewards, escaped him – or maybe he escaped it? – but the semantics were unimportant now. Now, Keith just lay in the grass beneath a full, brilliant moon, shoulder-to-shoulder with a boy that was much too pretty not to be deemed a public health hazard. Breathless, windswept, still burning with the final rush of adrenaline and euphoria that pistoned through their veins.

And then, Lance turned one of those blinding smiles on him, the kind Keith forgotten could exist beneath the surface world. And he knew that there was no going back for him after tonight.

“I’m sorry, about running and causing a big thing.” Lance eventually managed, his voice sheepish. “I guess I was all nervous because of this whole thing, like I was thinking about it for days and I just couldn’t figure out, like, what to expect – I know you couldn’t be _all_ bad, but, you’re still like, the _King_ of the _Underworld_.”

Lance made a wide gesture with his hands overhead, like stars bursting apart. “And I couldn’t decide if I should be scared or if you were messing with me or what, so I was just… _on-edge_. Trying to play it super cool, ya know? I hope I didn’t mess up anything, and I’m glad you got your book or whatever, and this probably isn’t like, a _thing_ like I was making out – making _it_ out – to be in my head. Um – sorry, I tend to ramble, just tell me to shut up if I’m talking too much. Like I am right now. I do that when I’m nervous, uh, anyway. Shutting up now.”

“Oh.” Blinking, Keith’s brain needed a second to unfurl all of that information – Lance spoke much faster than virtually anyone else he knew, but once he made sense of it, Keith failed to keep the smirk from his expression.

“I make you nervous?”

And, honestly, he didn’t even intend to sound teasing, considering the god of the dead himself felt like he was barely managing to keep his wits about him, but Keith was so genuinely _relieved_ to know that Lance felt at least some amount of nerves over this that he genuinely couldn’t help but ask, the words spoken in disbelief instead of provocation.

“W-well,” Lance was now the one scowling, and he cleared his throat before pointing his chin out and looking determinedly away. “Of course! You’re Shiro’s brother and all, ya know, _dark and mysterious_ ,” he flapped a hand and brushed the edge of Keith’s cloak, a rich, obsidian-colored fabric that was lined around the collar by the fur of the first teumessian fox. “ _And_ you could probably destroy me with your crazy Underworld magic in, like, two seconds flat, so _yeah._ I’m a _little_ nervous, alright?”

“Two seconds?” Keith raised a brow. “That’s a bit generous. I’d say five, maybe ten seconds.”

Lance huffed, evidently somewhere between amused and annoyed. “That’s not exactly _reassuring_.”

“It’s not meant to be,” the Underworld god agreed, a bit more seriously as he tilted his head. “Immortal or not, we aren’t endless. Anything can be worn thin enough can be unmade into fates that are much worse than death. You know that, don’t you?”

A flicker of doubt furrowed Lance’s brow, and he was silent for several seconds. Eventually, he managed to nod his head.

And, gods, all Keith could think of was how how this was a bad idea after all. It just took studying Lance’s gaze for mere seconds – eyes that were wide, and expressive, and so _vulnerable_ – Keith almost couldn’t stand to look, like he’d stumbled upon something precious and was seconds from smashing it beneath his boots.

Lance was just so – so frighteningly _open_. Much more than he should be for the kinds of company Keith had to offer.

“And doesn’t that scare you?”

_Don’t **I** scare you?_

“I… don’t know how I’m supposed to answer that.”

Keith, deadpan, suggested, “Honestly, I would hope?”

“No, no,” Lance shook his head, lips pressed tightly together. “I mean – I guess, I don’t really _know_ you yet? Of course that’s something that _could_ happen, but, so what? A lot of other gods or deities could probably all hurt me too if they wanted. I don’t want to sell myself short, cause I love my domain, but I realize that I’m not exactly the god of, like, _weapons and badassery_ or _hellfire and death_.”

Keith sputtered a disbelieving laugh, which Lance acknowledged with a small grin.

“I mean, being _afraid_ is the reason my mother doesn’t let me do anything, and I’m sort of tired of not doing anything because of what _could_ happen. And so, what? Just because you’ve got horns and a resting bitch face, I’m supposed to be _more_ afraid of you? Sorry, not happening.”

Dumfounded, Keith’s mouth had fallen open slightly. Who _was_ this guy?

“ _Resting bitch face?”_

A smile sat pretty on Lance’s lips, impermanent and light as a cirrus cloud.

“Yeah! That’s what they call it when you are all, _grrr_ ,” putting on an exaggerated scowl, he held up two hooked fingers by each of his pointed ears, mimicking what Keith could only guess was supposed to resemble his horns. “And who knows, maybe I _should_ be more afraid because of who you are, but, like... honestly, that’s a pretty shit metric to go by judging people? You were _nice_ to me a few days ago. A lot nicer than I thought you would be, so, I just figured, if my Mom is _so convinced_ that I’m bound to be cursed or corrupted or trapped or kidnapped or _something_ , that if it’s going to happen one way or another, I at least want to have a few good experiences before whatever happens, happens. I just want some amount of my life that’s been lived on _my_ terms.”

“Oh.” Keith, surprised by the sincerity and thoughtfulness of Lance’s words, found he didn’t know quite what to say in response.

He could certainly see a valid point to Lance’s position. If Melenor was as protective as he made her out to be – which Keith had to believe, seeing as Lance must have existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years by now, and they’d never even _seen_ each other before a few days ago – then Lance could continue to _exist_ under her watchful eye, but if he really wanted to _live_? At least in the capacity he was talking about – to take risks, experience the worlds and all three realms? It would never happen if he kept on with the lifestyle he’d been living.

...That said, taking up the _god of the underworld_ as his first “risk” _might_ have been a bit extreme, Keith mused, but considering his own position in the whole mess, it’s not like he was about to argue.

“So,” continued the god of flowers, a strangely smug grin for someone who had never met anyone from the Underworld as of three days ago. “If you have been planning something all along, I’d ask that you just get it over with and end my endless immortal coil already.”

Lance closed his eyes and sat up, held his head up high and gestured down his torso while spreading his arms wide, like he was offering himself as some kind of noble sacrifice.

“You’re really dramatic,” Keith said, doing his best to disguise his amusement as exasperation.

Lance opened one eye, grinning mischievously. “Thank you!”

“That wasn’t – nevermind.”

After running a hand down his face, the chthonic god continued, “But _no_ , I’m not going to – what did you say when we met, _torture your soul_ or something? Fuck, I’m not _evil_. I’m just… the bad that has to exist so that the good can exist, too.”

A thin brow raised, quizzical. “That doesn’t sound very fair.”

“It’s not –” Keith hesitated, only to shake his head and pluck up a resigned smile. He wasn’t really interested in unpacking all of that existentialism right this moment. Instead, he smiled and looked to Lance. “–a big deal. Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, okay.” Lance said, sounding unconvinced.

Not wanting him to push the subject, Keith glanced around briefly for something else to say, and he noticed that the field of green – grass grayed for his presence – was once again dotted by bell-shaped flowers, bowing to the earth with a pale, lustrous shine. The rays of moonlight reflected off their crisp blossoms, making the field almost glow with white light.

“These are beautiful,” he commented, running his hands up the stem of one and cradling the delicate bud in his palm. “What are they?”

“Oh, um. Well. Do you want the human answer, or the real one?”

Keith glanced sidelong, catching Lance smiling at the flower in his hands before meeting Keith’s gaze.

“Both?”

A laugh swelled in the air, and it settled back over them like early morning mist.

“Okay, fine. Humans call this one a _snowdrop_ , which is, like, pretty unoriginal? But it’s a pretty name, _way_ better than some of the lame ones they come up with, so that’s at least good. I’ve read that book you left me cover to cover so many times I know almost all of it – _they_ think it means, like, _hope,_ because in natural patterns or whatever they bloom first. It’s supposed to be like, _hey look, finally things aren’t shitty, here’s a flower to prove it_!”

Keith had to laugh at that, though the sound was cut short when Lance punctuated his statement by presenting _him_ with the flower, acting out his hypothetical offer. After blinking at it doubtfully, Keith accepted, wordless.

“But in reality, they’re not nearly that poetic.” An edge of… of _something_ tagged itself onto the other god’s voice, somewhere between sad and strangely… relaxed? Resignation, perhaps? “They come up when I’m tired, stressed, or... both, really. I’m not sure if I can put it into words super eloquently, but it’s like… you know, you’re happy that you finished something, even if you didn’t want to do it? It’s not like doing it really helped you feel better, but you’re at least glad that you _finished_? That’s sort of what these are… like. Doing something you’re not sure you can do, and being glad you managed to do it anyway.”

Once he’d finished speaking, Lance let out a long-suffering sigh, palms falling back into the grass and leaning back. He turned his head in Keith’s direction, tilting his chin slightly to tuck his own shoulder, almost shy.

“And that probably sounds dumb, but from my perspective, this was a _big_ deal. You’re – _you_ , you know? King of the Underworld. Shiro’s brother! And I’m… me. I don’t really have anything to offer, so I was surprised when you invited me, that was all. So, there ya go. A personal lesson in flowers from the god of flowers himself! Probably not _that_ cool considering you’ve got, like, a whole legion of undead or daemons or whatever. I’m… um – Keith?”

Lance stopped abruptly, voice cracking under the intensity of the other god’s stare.

In reality, Keith wasn’t even aware that he’d started to lean forward, had shifted a hand to rest just behind Lance’s in the grass. He was, in reality, trying to read Lance’s expression for any hint of deceit or doubt or tricks but – but Keith knew he wouldn’t find any. Not in this expression, blue eyes a pinion of light that drew him in like the moon drags in the tides.

Was Lance just an _extremely_ nice person, or did he really not understand that most people saw Keith as a monster? The idea that he had to work up his nerve to come to the surface to meet him, not just because he was nervous of being _killed_ , but because he didn’t have anything to _offer_ Keith?

And, Lance – he was relieved to have gone through with it, even _happy_ to have done so.

“Lance?” Keith said, looking from each of his eyes, and then to his lips. This was a bad, stupid idea, he knew it, should be doing _something_ to –

“Yeah?”

But Lance just sounded so _happy_. So sure, so unafraid. Keith wanted this so badly. He’d known hundreds of gods in his lifetime, and not one of them brought out this – this _feeling_. Like he’d be left in the rain all day and was shivering but was now warming up in front of a fire; it was refreshing and strange and beautiful and he wanted more of it.

“I’m going to kiss you now.”

And before Lance had the chance to answer, Keith closed the little distance that remained between them, and Keith didn’t know that _anything_ could feel like this – how does something both feel like its complete, and yet, not enough? He had so much selfish desire and couldn’t find the will to stop; Lance’s lips were petal-soft, unusually cold and fit softly, easily, against his own, slotting together only enough to make the kiss last longer without deepening it. His chest hurt from how frantically his heart raced, and every instinct he had was telling him _not_ to draw back, to lean in _further_ , to move his hands up to Lance’s chin and neck and shoulders, to _take_ , because that’s what he did. He takes, and takes, and takes.

But he didn’t, not this time.

And he wouldn’t, not from Lance.

They parted after a few seconds, and Lance’s eye scales winked at him like a star overhead, blue and vibrant.

“Ahh, uh, that – and you – and _me_?” The tan-skinned boy floundered for words, and Keith thought it was the most adorable thing he’d ever seen – that, and the fact he could feel vines starting to wrap around his hand, refusing to let him move more than a few inches from Lance’s face.

“I – yeah. I just thought… I _do_ think, you’re…” Keith swallowed, his throat drier than hell, which he could personally attest to. “Really special. I mean, you make yourself sound like you’re useless – _I_ can’t do this. I can’t create _anything_ , and you just,” he spread his non-restrained arm out, gesturing around them at the fact that they had taken refuge in and entire field of wildflowers, all at Lance’s will.

“And I think it’s nice. So I wanted to kiss you and–

“Bu-But you, and just – things aren’t that _simple,_ and you can’t just go around _saying_ things like that!” Lance hid his face in his hands, but made no move to deny it.

Keith tried not to sound too smug when he pointed, “But seeing as you’re not letting me go, I’m guessing you wanted to kiss me too?”

Lance’s head snapped up so fast it almost gave _Keith_ whiplash just to watch, and an unrestrained flush of mortification flash over his expression

“Oh my god – _oh my god you stupid vines let go!_ ” They twisted more tightly, almost to the point of pain, and Keith watched while trying not to laugh. It was strange, the vines on which they both touched were neither vibrant green nor washed out gray, but sort of pale green, struggling against their joint presence.

Lance huffed and fell back slightly, giving up, and fixed Keith with an oddly determined, almost _angry_ look.

“You know what? Fine – fuck you – I _did_ want to kiss you, and now you’re trapped. Sucks to be you.”

“Does it, though?” Keith wondered. “I’m pretty okay like this.”

“Hnnnnngg – ” Lance threw a snowdrop at him, and Keith easily blocked it with one hand. That said, the flower managed to distract him and Lance caught him off-guard by suddenly pushing back into his face, closing the distance between them a second time with a fierce kiss.

This was much sharper, almost _aggressive_ , and Lance had shifted to kneel rather than sit at some point during his assault. Keith was surprised, but entirely without complaint, to have Lance’s hands tipping his head back while the lithe god sat up and pressed their mouths together with bruising force.

(Coupled with the fact that Keith was at least partially _restrained_ , it was becoming a little difficult not to focus on the sudden stab of heat that flashed white-hot in his belly. Keith found he had to consciously stop himself from letting the situation go any further or else – who fucking knows what could have happened.)

“Yes, I wanted to kiss you, but did you have to be such a dick about it?” Lance said, barely a breath away, one hand roughly intertwined with his hair and the other with fingers splayed out over his cheek. “God, stop looking at me like that, you pretty demonic bastard.”

“Pretty?” Keith asked, feigning innocence. He thought Lance had seemed tempting before, but that was before he’d stared up at a flustered, scowling Lance, face casted in shadow as he blocked out the moon – that was _nothing_ compared to this.

Joking, mostly, Keith spoke to no one in particular, “I like this one. I think I’ll keep it.”

Lance smirked, teasing at both a promise and a challenge, and he dropped back into the grass, leaving Keith’s personal space much too soon.

_“I’d like to see you try.”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> a huge thanks to all of the love and support I've gotten from my readers who've checked out [star-crossed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15965069/chapters/37236314), writing this has definitely been a product of your endless encouragement. :)
> 
> special shout-out to [Kaiden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaiden) for suggesting the Psyche/Eros pairing! it was a lot of fun to reinvent Lotura in these terms!!
> 
> take good care & thanks for reading!


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